Victor Davis Hanson writes that there is some hope amid the current gloom in the Middle East:

...all is not lost, since lunacy cuts both ways. Iran and Syria unleashed Hezbollah because they were both facing global scrutiny, one over nuclear acquisition and the other over the assassination of Lebanese reformer Rafik Hariri. Those problems won’t go away for either of them — nor, if we persist, will the democratic fervor in Afghanistan and Iraq on their borders.

We still don’t know the extent of the damage that Hezbollah suffered, but it perhaps took casualties ten times the Israelis’ — losses — not to be dismissed even in the asymmetrical laws of postmodern warfare. Hezbollah’s leaders were hiding in embassies and bunkers; Israel’s were not. For all the newfound magnetism of Nasrallah, he brought ruin to his flock, and fright to the Arab establishment around Israel.

A surprised Israel now has a good glimpse of the terrorists’ new way of war, and probably next time will attack the supplier, not the launcher, of the rocketry. And when the Reuters stringers go away, the “civilians” of southern Lebanon, off-camera, might not be so eager to see more real fireworks lighting up their skies — or far-off, pristine Syria and Iran in safety praising the courage of the ruined amid the rubble. Note how Hezbollah already is desperately racing around the craters to assure its homeless constituency that it has enough Iranian cash to buy back lost sympathies.

Even the ceasefire can come back to bite the Islamists and their supporters. Hezbollah won’t be disarmed as promised, much less stay out of Katyusha range of the border. And that defiance will only reveal the impotence of the Lebanese and the U.N., reminding both that they have talked themselves into a corner and now are responsible to keep caged their own pet 7th-century vipers. This can only work to Israel’s favor when the next rockets go off, since no one then will be proposing an “international” solution — although it will be interesting to see whether Jacques Chirac talks of the “nuclear” option once his soldiers begin to be picked off by Hezbollah.

In a larger sense, the foiled London terrorist plot won’t endear either Islamists or their appeasers to millions in the world who face travel delays, cancelled flights, and body searches — on top of paying billions more to the Arab oil producers who in response whine even more in their victimhood.

Unfortunately, Melanie Phillips says that Britain's chattering classes remain fast asleep:

Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of the Metropolitan Police described the plot as a “criminal” act which was “not about communities” but about “people who might masquerade in the community, hiding behind certain faiths.” So an act of holy war to be perpetrated in the name of Islam just happened to use that faith as a random bit of camouflage, just as it might have used Zen Buddhism, say, or Zoroastrianism?

Then there’s the customary chorus that it’s all due to the war in Iraq and Britain’s poodling to America. This was also the premise of the letter last weekend by 38 Muslim groups, MPs, and peers that unless Britain altered its foreign policy it would get more terrorist outrages. This shameful threat to the nation produced a furious denunciation by the home secretary, John Reid, for proposing that terrorists should dictate British policies.

But the argument that foreign policy is the cause of the threat to Britain — a claim trotted out by a wide spectrum of people — is itself idiotic beyond measure. As Reid said, there was an al Qaeda plot in Birmingham to blow up Britain back in 2000 — before 9/11, let alone the war in Iraq. Similarly, jihadi attacks on the U.S. began 22 years before 9/11 with the Iran embassy hostage crisis in 1979, followed by two decades of further attacks.

Even now, much of Britain fails to understand the apocalyptic messianism now driving the regime in Iran to develop nuclear weapons with which to blackmail the world.

It fails to acknowledge the religious nature of this world war, with even more alarming signs of an emerging Sunni and Shia strategic alliance in Iraq and Gaza, and with al Qaeda supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. When President Bush said we were in a war against Islamic fascism, he was merely stating a demonstrable truth.

And this remains disturbing (and what's even more disturbing is how undisturbing it is to many in power in the UK):

A recent Pew opinion poll across Europe revealed that, while Britain was the most respectful country of all towards its Muslim citizens, they repaid the compliment by hating their home country, the west and the Jews more than Muslims anywhere else. Why? The answer is inescapable. British Muslims are being radicalised by Britain itself.

Since Muslims whose minds are already bent by the propaganda of lies and hatred against America, Israel and the Jews pouring out of the Muslim world are further subjected by the BBC and other media outlets to daily — even hourly — diatribes about the evil of America, the evil of Israel and the fact that Britain is a patsy of evil America and evil Israel, who can possibly be surprised that untold numbers of impressionable young Muslims sign up to rid the planet of this apparent scourge?

The BBC, whose global influence is equalled only by its culpability, powerfully incites hatred by persistently misrepresenting Israel’s self-defence as unwarranted aggression, and giving air-time to an endless procession of Islamic jihadists, propagandists, anti-Western activists and bigots with rarely even a hint of a challenge.

As Reid said, there was an al Qaeda plot in Birmingham to blow up Britain back in 2000 — before 9/11, let alone the war in Iraq. Similarly, jihadi attacks on the U.S. began 22 years before 9/11 with the Iran embassy hostage crisis in 1979, followed by two decades of further attacks.

Good point.

"...This can only work to Israel’s favor when the next rockets go off, since no one then will be proposing an “international” solution..."

Oh yeah, right. THIS time it will be different! "Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing..."

Face it, almost the entire world hates the Jews and nothing they do will change that. They could discover new laws of physics that would allow them to multiply land like Christ did loaves and fishes and give the land to the Arabs, and the rockets and UN condemnations would still come. This is all building toward a second Holocaust, after which the world might lay off them for a few decades, before they start up again. The Moslems of course will never stop until we destroy them or they destroy the Jews, and then they'll start on the Christians.