I wasn’t sure about the category on this one–it could have been both space science and war commentary. But here’s the real scoop from the Religion of Peace (TM).

The fact that this is a news story is depressing. On the other hand, the story itself offers a glimmer of hope. One would like to think that the basic humanity of the people called “Palestinians” hasn’t been totally quenched by the oppressive conditions and brainwashing that they’ve endured for decades (and no, I’m not referring to the Israeli “occupation”).

Golda Meir once said that the war would end when the Palestinians decided that they loved their children more than they hated the Jews. This may be a sign that this is starting to happen.

The Vatican has actually condemned Palestinian terror tactics.

The Vatican, often critical of Israel, harshly condemned Palestinian terrorists for trying to use a teenager as a suicide bomber.

I guess it would have been all right if it was an adult murdering those Jews (and other “Palestinians”).

In Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (a movie that’s about to be rereleased to theatres to capitalize on the success of Mel Gibson’s “Passion”), there’s a hilarious scene in which a man is about to be stoned to death for blasphemy.

Really.

MATTHIAS: Look. I don’t think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying ‘Jehovah’.

CROWD: Oooh! He said it again! Oooh!…

OFFICIAL: You’re only making it worse for yourself!

MATTHIAS: Making it worse?! How could it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

Allison Kaplan Sommer says that, after years of intifada, this is the point that the Israeli public has reached, and why there’s little domestic opposition to Sharon’s plan to build the wall and kill the terrorist leadership.

With nothing left to lose, let’s try to do what we can to protect ourselves. That’s the sentiment of the man on the street.

Clearly, the Israeli public seems to have all but given up on figuring out how to make the right moves in order to nudge the Palestinians towards wanting a peaceful two-state solution. They’ve given up. That’s why there’s generally support for Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan — otherwise known as the “We’re So Disgusted with the Palestinians, We’re Getting the Hell Away From Them and Building a Big Wall” plan. And if they try to wage war from the other side of the wall, they’ll get the same treatment as Yassin.

We’re not running scared. We’re just sick and tired of this.

Stephen den Beste (from whom I got the link to Allison’s post) has further thoughts.

Rantisi has been given the leadership of Hamas.

Defense chiefs have decided to try to kill the entire Hamas leadership, security sources said Tuesday, a day after Israel assassinated the sheikh.

I wouldn’t want to have to shop for his life insurance.

Seventy two raisins, coming up.

“I have been to the mountain top. I have a dream.”

“I have a dream of a Palestine from the west bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

“I have a dream of blood-sucking Zionists–men, women, babies–in their ice cream parlors, sundered and bleeding by metal fasteners soaked in rat poison, dead or writhing in agony now and for years.”

“I have a dream of a Middle East without Jews, in which Arabs can mingle with Islamicists, and oppress unbelievers and women, without being offended or defiled by the oppressive Jewish race.”

“I have a dream, of a future in which people will be judged not by the content of their character, but by their religion and ethnicity. I have seen the promised land.”

Yes, we all remember how the Reverend Martin Luther King sent out children with bombs strapped surreptiously to their bellies to deliberately murder innocents, in order to seek a better life for his people.

Mark Steyn says that our supposed betters in Europe have it backwards:

In 2002 and 2003, I took a couple of two-legged, mini fact-finding trips – first to western Europe, then on to the Middle East. And both times I was struck by the way the Muslims of Araby were far less inflamed than those in the alienated immigrant ghettoes around Paris and Amsterdam. Life in the West, exposure to the self-loathing platitudes of Anglican clerics, these are the sort of things that seem to inflame Muslims. Many of the wackiest Islamists from Richard Reid to Zacarias Moussaoui to Metin Kaplan are products of the enervated Europe symbolised by the Rev Mark Beach…

…[The Islamists’] most effective guerrillas aren’t in the Hindu Kush, where it is the work of moments to drop a daisycutter on the mighty Pashtun warrior. They’re travelling light on the bridle-paths of Europe – the small cells that operate in the nooks and crannies of a free society, while politicians cling to the beaten tracks – old ideas, multicultural pieties and a general hope that things will turn out for the best.

As usual, none of these mindless minions who claim to speak for the Iraqis have apparently bothered to ask them what they think.

Compare and contrast:

From Sydney to Tokyo, from Santiago, Chile, to Madrid, London, New York and San Francisco, demonstrators condemned U.S. policy in Iraq and said they did not believe Iraqis are better off or the world safer because of the war.

to

Seventy per cent of people said that things were going well or quite well in their lives, while only 29% felt things were bad.

And 56% said that things were better now than they were before the war.

I haven’t seen Gibson’s movie, but I didn’t think that it was anti-semitic until I read this–now I’m having doubts. I doubt if Yasser thinks that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is anti-semitic.

That is, they did if their goal in Friday’s bombing was to remove the Spanish government that supported the War on Terror. And why wouldn’t it be their goal?

I very much fear that the Spanish electorate has just dramatically increased the probability of a terrorist attack on American soil in late October and early November, emboldening them to think that they can influence American politics as well. And I hope that if my fear comes true, that in our case, it will have exactly the opposite of the intended effect, as September 11 did.