August 12, 2002

Instapundit reports that SFSU has come up with what it seems to think is an appropriate response to the riot against Jewish students: create a program of Islamic studies. Yeah, that'll teach 'em what rioting gets you. Blogger e Moo is not impressed with this strategy, or with SFSU President Robert Corrigan.  2:09:43 PM

Opinion Journal gets results: Mercedes bends? No, but BMW does. After our item yesterday on the German car companies' online maps that omitted Israel--BMW's referred to it as "Palestine"--readers who wrote BMW to complain got this reply, which we also received: BMW Group regrets having published this map on one of its internet sites. Obviously there have been faults in designing and programming this site. We are working on correcting these faults as soon as possible. As a car manufacturer we are not involved in Middle East politics, do not support any of the given political attitudes and did not aim to make any kind of political statement. By this morning the page with the offending map had disappeared from BMW's Web site. The Mercedes map (to which we initially neglected to link yesterday) is still up. If you want to see what the BMW map looked like, Charles Johnson has posted copies of both. Both BMW and Mercedes do business with Israel. This Mercedes page lists the company's Tel Aviv office (right between its Baghdad and Kuwait offices!), and BMW has an Israeli Web site in Hebrew. 1:01:21 PM

Victor Davis Hanson of the NRO talks about how many europeans are failing the "ethical litmus test for our generation": Because there is an opposition and a free media in Israel, Mr. Sharon's policies are the subject of constant scrutiny and debate — again not so with Mr. Arafat's. When an Israeli missile goes astray and kills civilians, an elected government apologizes and the military undertakes an investigation; meanwhile the opposition party gears up to capitalize on such a blunder. In contrast, when Palestinian murderers butcher innocent civilians in a university, 10,000 turn out in the street to cheer, and a variety of groups claim credit — all either ignored or tacitly condoned by the Palestinian authority. Imagine the world's reaction if Jews had deliberately blown up dozens of young Palestinian students as they ate in their school cafeteria, prompting a mass demonstration of Israeli glee in streets of Tel-Aviv. 11:34:03 AM

Arafat's rival candidate calls for pause in Intifada. “I see both sides are exhausted,” he told the newspaper, saying he would travel the Palestinian territories to “convince people that we cannot continue with the present situation of terror attacks and counterstrikes and revenge for the counterstrikes and more terror strikes.” (IndyMedia: Jerusalem) [Palestine & Israel News] 11:29:34 AM