This week's Newsweek says it better than I can: Thoughtful comments, a friendly e-mail, and a slight revision to her post from Meryl, although the temperature's still dangerously high over at Shelley's; a few Webloggers — who I believe would share my concern when, say, John Ashcroft declares that those who question the administration's blank-check, infinite-future war plans and assaults on civil liberties "only aid terrorists" — are nonetheless trying to make excuses or claim mitigating circumstances for Mike Sanders's slander of all who, in Jonathon's words, express "any opinion about the Middle East tragedy that does not meet with Mike's approval" as "terrorist sympathizers." (Those of us who've started tossing around the word "McCarthyism" are not, of course, referring to Mike's right to remove links, but to his labeling of those who disagree.)
Weblogs and columnists have made some insightful points about how squishy liberals like me or goyim who saw Schindler's List don't grasp half of the horrific history of anti-Semitism, or the venomous depth and breadth of eliminate-the-Jews hatred that permeates much of the Arab world today. They're right.
But if you turn that observation into policy, insist I should write "permeates all of the Arab world" instead of "much," say that the only response to the Saudi peace plan is to spit it aside as "the Saudi (kaff!) peace plan," what then? What options are left to us, what are you saying? That peace is impossible, and Jews' only defense must be an eternal, preemptive-strike offense? That the only solution is to keep escalating the violence, hitting the Palestinians harder and harder until they're crushed into submission?
Okay, call me an immoral appeaser, but I fear that simply won't work, especially with nuclear and bioterrorism waiting in the wings (hell, halfway out on stage). I agree with Thomas Friedman's recent columns about how, as happened in Lebanon, all it does is make the bombers ever more resolved to level the count of Palestinians and Israelis killed, from 10:1 to 5:1 to 1:1 — and lets the Muslim world (cf. Saudi newspaper propagandists) continue to get a free ride, pointing to Israel as the scapegoat, oppressor, and source of all evil, instead of beginning to address the inequality and economic destitution of their own states, let alone extend a hand to their Palestinian brothers.
As I've written before, I have no Solomonic solution or dove to pull out of my hat; I've been influenced by Friedman's and other writings to suspect the only outcome short of firestorm may be to let both Israel and Palestine claim a solution was imposed upon them, a Palestinian state and pre-1967-borders Israel, both to be monitored by U.N./U.S. troops basically forever. That's profoundly depressing, but that's my take. And that's the last time this Weblog will talk about the Middle East; I have much more fun bashing Bush's tax cuts and get much more traffic when I write about allergies to hand cream.
9:02:44 AM 
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Yeah, well, my desk phone is yellow: When Patricia and I got our first (VoiceStream) cell phones last year, I briefly tried an Ericsson pocket model but finally chose the tiny blue Nokia 8290, which had been the favorite among the twentysomething female sales reps in my old company at the time. Now we're thinking of switching to Verizon Wireless, and I'm thinking of getting the pale blue Motorola V.120c. I wish to say that I am a 43-year-old, 200-pound man, and my wife is completely incorrect when she says I like girly phones. I just like blue better than black ones, is all.
