Let’s see if I have the timing of this right. Shaul Mofaz says Israel will not tolerate Hamas as elected legislators, and will not work with the PA if Hamas becomes their partner in terror. They may not be able to actively prevent it, but nothing says they have to help the palestinians with their elections–meaning that Israel would not lift curfews and travel bans, thus guaranteeing a low turnout for Hamas. Before meeting with Mofaz, Condi Rice says that Abbas must fight terror before moving on to the next step in the Road Map. In the meantime, Rice tells Mofaz that he should suck it up and deal with Hamas terrorists as legislators, as it’s an “internal” palestinian issue. (But of course, terrorists were not allowed to run for office in Afghanistan and Iraq, and nobody told the U.S. to suck it up and let them.) Mofaz then announces that Israel will not interfere with palestinian elections.

Mr. Mofaz said that the Palestinian Authority chief should move to dismantle armed factions before the election, and that Israel would not have any dealings with members of terrorist groups who might be elected to the parliament and become part of a Palestinian government.

Wow, that’ll show them. “You’re a member of Hama? You can’t come to the meeting.”

Once again, the hypocrisy and double-standard of the world–and this particular administration–makes me sick. A terrorist is a terrorist, whether he is wearing a suit or a kaffiyeh.

Once again, the Bush Administration’s stance on terrorism against Israelis fails the test.

I know someone that voted for Bush who will be voting Democratic come Tuesday.

In the upside-down world of Iran, this makes sense:

Iran summoned Italy’s ambassador to Tehran to protest a planned pro-Israeli rally on Thursday that was organized to denounce recent anti-Israel comments by the Iranian president, according to news reports.

Italy’s foreign ministry confirmed Wednesday that Ambassador Roberto Toscano had been summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry a day earlier, but did not say why. The ANSA news agency reported he had been handed a note of protest because of the rally planned to be held outside the Iranian Embassy in Rome.

It is about time to bring on the yourish.com mantra.

In a separate meeting Tuesday, Toscano also met with Iranian Vice President Parziv Davoudi.

During that meeting, Davoudi called on Toscano “to convey the realities of Iranian society accurately to his government so that Italian officials can adopt stances toward Iran without being influenced by Zionist propaganda,” according to Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Davoudi also called for Italy’s “active response to the crimes committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians,” IRNA said on its Web site.

Yep. It’s time: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already. Especially the ones in Iran, and most especially, its Jew-hating president and mullahs.

Terje Roed-Larsen has declared himself “encouraged” by Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm in Lebanon.

In a recent report Terje Roed-Larsen said there had been little progress toward the disarming of militias in Syria, including Hezbollah, as required by Security Council resolution 1559. The report called for a new dialogue to achieve it.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasralla had responded there was no point in dialogue if disarmament was the only U.N. option, but said his group would consider a dialogue on how to protect Lebanon and the role of the resistance.

Asked if he was upset by those remarks, Roed-Larsen said he was “to the contrary very encouraged.”

You may remember the dishonorable Mr. Roed-Larsen. He was the UN official that was loudly proclaiming “massacre!” regarding the Jenin hoax. He hates Israel. So perhaps in the upside-down world in which he (and Iran; see post above) lives, the fact that Hezbollah refuses to disarm is an encouraging statement. Because then they can threaten the real threat to peace in the region, Israel. Yeah, my sarcasm meter just went off the scale. Because this is what Roed the Toad also knows:

Yet it also said that Palestinian militants in Lebanon are getting more weapons from Syria, and Hezbollah shows no sign of disarming.

Yes, those are very encouraging signs. To the Israel-haters.

You just have to understand the way these people think.

Arieh O’Sullivan writes in the Jerusalem Post that the IDF is winning the war on terror.

Arrest raids like the one early Wednesday in Jenin that unfortunately killed Staff.-Sgt. Yonatan Evron, combined with targeted assassinations, have come pretty close to quashing Palestinian terror.

On the surface, this statement appears ludicrous in light of last week’s suicide bombing in Hadera and the repeated attempts to fire Kassam rockets out of the Gaza Strip into Israel. But security officials stress that the terror organizations are in distress, and disregard rhetoric about whether they will renew their truce or not.

Each night, security forces fan out across Judea and Samaria and detain suspected fugitives. Nearly 1,000 have been nabbed and brought in for questioning in the past few months. While many were eventually released, the arrest of key terrorists has decimated their ranks, particularly in Hamas, who are now suffering from a dearth of local leaders in the run-up to Palestinian elections.

Yes, I find it difficult to believe as well. But he goes on:

But the crackdown on the terrorist groups in the West Bank has been so vast and consistent that they are resigned to attempting to sneak in from the Gaza Strip not just know-how, but muscle as well.

This was evident in the revelation this week that security forces had nabbed three veteran terrorists attempting to sneak out of the Gaza Strip, through the Sinai and to the West Bank through the Negev.

These three men, members of the Popular Resistance Committees, were not just experts in manufacturing Kassam rockets and explosives, but at organizing active cells and carrying out attacks against Israelis. Their job was to fill the void and set up a military infrastructure in the northern West Bank.

“We are talking of transferring not just brains, but muscle as well,” said a senior security official. “They were to be the bridgehead.”

According to senior security officials, fewer and fewer people are involved in Palestinian terror. Hamas is refraining from openly staging attacks in order to present itself as a political movement in the lead-up to the elections.

The IDF thinking is that, contrary to world opinion, you can defeat terrorists militarily. To that end, they have a network of informants throughout the territories, undercover agents in palestinian towns (I’ll have to search for that link; I wrote about it years ago), and elite forces whose job is to arrest or kill terrorists once their location is known. (I prefer the latter, the catch-and-release program always results in more dead Jews.)

The Israeli strategy regarding terror has always been one of trying to exhaust the public support behind it. Is it working? The jury is out, as far as I’m concerned.

Three and a half years ago, Christopher Caldwell wrote an essay in the Weekly Standard about the dangers inherent in the suburbs of Paris, which are not quite suburbs. The essay was about French anti-Semitism, including the French “youths’” unremitting attacks on Jews. It is a case, as many people have pointed out, of the canary in the coal mine. The French insisted there was no problem, and so, of course, nothing much was done.

Today, the French are paying for it with their seventh straight day of riots by “suburban” Muslims. Three and a half years ago, it was the Jews paying the price of French indifference. But the writing was on the wall for all to see:

The Jewish attacks–it should be plain by now–are the work of the Muslim minority in France. Let no one doubt the delinquency, though. These neighborhoods are becoming single-race areas, inhabited by North African immigrants and their second- and third-generation descendants. They are zones of drug-dealing, political apathy, unemployment (which stands over 35 percent in such places), and violence. Hence law-enforcement agents, mayors, and politicians refer to the most violent among them as zones de non-droit (”lawless areas”), where even the police won’t go, except maybe in daylight hours to remove a body. Public powers are resisted with force, and not just the police, who have been targeted for killing by organized “anti-cop brigades.” Even firemen, long a beloved class of public servants in France, have been assaulted in housing projects surrounding Paris.

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