by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:58 P.M. EDT

BB 'C' No Evil
When Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, provoking the current conflagration, the Shiite terrorist outfit apparently intended to use them as bargaining chips to demand the release of prisoners. Press reports often discuss this as if there were an equivalence between the Israeli soldiers, who committed no crimes but were simply defending their own country within its borders, and Arab terrorists. So it's worth pointing out just who the "prisoners" in Israeli hands are.

According to the BBC "the prisoner Hezbollah wants most" is Samir Qantar. On April 22, 1979, Qantar murdered 28-year-old Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter and caused the death of another Haran daughter, age 2. Haran's widow, Smadar Haran Kaiser, describes the crime (she transliterates the murderer's name as "Kuntar"):

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border.

Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer.

As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat.

They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The BBC gives a rather more sanitized account of the crime: "Qantar . . . attacked a block of flats in Nahariha in 1979, killing a father and his daughter."

Hezbollah Groupie
One Cecilia Lucas, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, has penned a "love poem for Hizbullah." We kid you not. Here's a sample:

You were born out of death to a life in a cage
Where bombs are not the only reason people die
Fed by the violence of hunger and homelessness
Raised by colonialism
Your heart and your will still grew strong

You scare me
Not just because they tell me to be scared
Not just because they repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of 1983
Begging me to understand
Americans are worth more than Lebanese

We suppose a certain romanticization of nihilistic political violence is a common enough form of adolescent rebellion, though one suspects young Miss Lucas is getting egged on by her professors, many of whom no doubt are liberal baby boomers who never outgrew their own adolescence.

Ah well, the best way to respond to this sort of thing is with mockery, as blogger "Iowahawk," writing under the nom de plume "Omar Walid Muhammed, Chairman, Hezbollah Poetry Club," devastatingly does, in a poem called "I Love You Too, Cecilia Lucas":

You were born in the Valley to a life in a suburban cage
Encino, where mean girls and cheerleaders
Drop bombs of hate on the unpopular girls
Shy poetry club chicks like you
With 1480 SATs and early admission to Berkeley
Fed by the violence and lookism of the dance squad
Raised in a four bedroom colonial
They wouldn't let you wear your Che T-shirt to prom
But your heart and your armpit hair still grew proud and strong

You scare me too
Not just because you have that Code Pink Manson girl freak-vibe
Not just because you repeat, repeat, repeat
All those quotes from your dog-eared volumes of
Chomsky
and Zinn
and Edward Said
Begging me to understand
Can't we just hold each other
Instead of talking, talking, talking
About your Masters thesis?

Dems for Israel?
Thanks to today's Washington Post, we know who one of those anonymous U.N. ambassadors who bashed John Bolton to the New York Times isn't:

Israel's U.N. envoy, Dan Gillerman, said Bolton's arrival has been a "breath of fresh air at Turtle Bay precisely because he's not your typical diplomat."

"I'm certainly not going to tell the Senate or House of Representatives how to vote, but if John Bolton were to be confirmed by the Israeli Knesset, he would get all 120 votes," Gillerman said.

Yesterday Senate Democrats were denouncing Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, for his anti-Israel statements. Yet most are expected to oppose Bolton again (although the New York Sun reports Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, "facing increasing pressure from pro-Israel groups" to back Bolton, or at least not filibuster him, have been conspicuously silent. In any case, the Bolton vote will be a test of whether whatever warm feelings Democrats harbor toward Israel outweigh their hatred of President Bush.

Dr. Demento
From the Associated Press:

Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart.

Dean called President Bush "the most divisive president probably in our history."

We'd have to say that superlative belongs to Abraham Lincoln, on whose watch 11 states actually tried to leave the union. Under Bush there hasn't been a serious secession movement even in the People's Republic of Vermont.

Anyway, the AP also reports that at the same appearance, Dean declared, "The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite." And the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports that "Dean also had a harsh assessment of [Katherine] Harris, a U.S. House member trying to unseat U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.":

"Thank God for Bill Nelson, because we'd have another crook in the United States Senate if it weren't for him. He is going to beat the pants off Katherine Harris," Dean said during his 20-minute address. "She doesn't understand that it's . . . improper to be chairman of a campaign and count the votes at the same time. This is not Russia and she is not Stalin."

Now we understand why Dean is complaining about how "divisive" Bush is. He wanted to be the most divisive president in our history!

Meanwhile, an unscientific DemocraticUnderground poll finds that, at this writing, 72% agree with the statement, "I deal with severe mental illness in my home."

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar
We've often made fun of the Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson, but we have to admit we have a newfound respect for him after reading yesterday's column:

Nancy Pelosi bared fangs to show that the Democratic Party no longer has toothless gums. On national security, she said, "When you think of women and defense and security, think of a lioness. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead."

On mid term election strategy, she sounded like she was warming up for the old World Wrestling Federation. "You cannot go head to head with the president until you take him down. Take him down, make him pay, and then we can have a conversation." . . .

"The way they've come at us in the past has been gays, guns, and God: abortion, gay marriage, and guns, and they've had some success with that with people whose personal interests are served by voting Democratic," Pelosi said. . . .

Pelosi admits that the Democrats do not yet have a soundbite as "alliterative" as gays, guns, and God. Somehow the party's congressional candidates "must own August" with variations of a still-muddy, six-point theme called "A New Direction for America." The six points center around [sic] healthcare, gasoline prices, college costs, the minimum wage, Social Security, and the deficit. "We think economic issues can trump values issues when there's a message."

Jackson has to have had amazing self-control not to burst out laughing at this stuff--especially that line "think of a lioness." For our part, we'll never again be able to think about Nancy Pelosi without thinking about Lyonnaise sauce.

(Hat tip: Tom Elia.)

They'll Call It 'Soun'--South and Down
"House and Senate Democrats to Call for New Direction"--headline, Democratic press release, July 26

Reuterville Hates America
Even more editorializing than usual in this Reuters dispatch:

With anti-American sentiment at unprecedented levels around the world, Americans worried about their country's low standing are pushing a grassroots campaign to change foreign perceptions of the United States "one handshake at a time."

The idea is to turn millions of Americans into "citizen diplomats" who use personal meetings with foreigners to counter the ugly image of the United States shown in a series of international public opinion polls. They show widespread negative attitudes not only toward U.S. policies but also toward the American people and, increasingly, even American products.

To stem the relentless decline of America's international standing--a dramatic change from the almost universal sympathy for the country immediately after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington--leaders of more than 30 civic organizations formed a "Coalition for Citizen Diplomacy" two years ago.

The coalition, a loose alliance of national, state and community groups, held its first national summit in July in Washington, where speakers deplored the sorry state of the U.S. image but expressed hope that individual action and international people-to-people exchanges could go a long way toward improving things. . . .

Not even the most optimistic delegates to the Washington meeting, billed as the first of its kind, thought citizen diplomacy could soon reverse a trend that has accelerated sharply under President George W. Bush, many of whose foreign policy decisions have been criticized as unilateralist and arrogant.

Hey Reuters, we don't like you either. Meanwhile, we got a chuckle out of this headline on the CBS News Web site: "Poll: World Doesn't Respect Bush." So they polled the whole world? No, it turns out the poll finds that Americans don't think the world respects Bush. Arrogant Americans--thinking they can speak for the world!

Her Ex-Children Could Not Be Reached for Comment
"Yates' Ex-Husband Criticizes Prosecutors"--headline, Associated Press, July 27

What Would Kids Do Without Experts?
"Parents' Death Will Scar Kids, Expert Says"--headline, Rocky Mountain News (Denver), July 25

News You Can Use
"Wife-Mistress Introduction Can Be Touchy"--headline, Houston Chronicle, July 27

If They're That Desperate, Can't We Send Some Food?
"British Cloning Scientists to Pay for Eggs"--headline, United Press International, July 27

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Famed Hacker Felled by Flu"--headline, Associated Press, July 26
  
  
• "Dead Moose Disappears From Side of the Road"--headline, Associated Press, July 27
  
  
• "Diseased Tree at Henderson Independent Removed"--headline, Salisbury (N.C.) Post, July 27
  
  
• "Slow Sales Close City's Only Gay Bar"--headline, Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.), July 27

'I Never Consulted Any Imaginary Dwarf'
In May we noted the case of a Florentino Floro, a Philippine judge who, according to Reuters, "claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs" and had "asked for his job back after being sacked by the country's Supreme Court." This morning we received an email from Judge Floro, who would like to clarify matters:

On April 6, 2006, the Philippine Supreme Court RELIEVED (separated--it did not dismiss) me from judicial service, and paid me 3 years backwages, by reason of PSYCHOSIS, a medical incapacity--because I allegedly believed in dwarves, angel of death, inflicting sicknesses, healing, prophecy, psychic phenomena and (in writing) predicted the downfall of 13th Philippine President Joseph Estrada (on December, 1998) who was ousted by people power on January 20, 2001.

TRUTH: I never used the word "DWARVES" in any DECISION, and I never consulted any imaginary dwarf to pen my decisions; my detractors submitted these false evidence or lies to replace me with their political candidate; what I do believe in is: a) in the so-called (my) SPIRIT GUIDES or PROTECTORS: LUIS, is the KING OF ALL KINGS of ELEMENTALS/spirits worldwide (I opine due to his lights, violet and white); and b) he is GOD's ANGEL (Genesis, Exodus, etc.)--what St. Paul teaches: Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Prophecy and Spiritual Healing. I am GIFTED; I never tried to develop my psychic powers, since these are God's GIFTs to me--TO HEAL and TO PROPHESY.

So the story turns out to be not as crazy as it sounded.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Some alternatives to pre-emptive retreat in Iraq.
• Peggy Noonan: Why does the president call the secretary of state "Condi"? And what exactly is his philosophy?
• Dan Senor: What's behind the Iraqi prime minister's anti-Israel animus.