As to doubnlethink, it seems rather common among Muslims, especially Arabs. They will announce that 9/11 could not possibly have been done by Muslims but was done by the Mossad, then with the next breath announce that 9/11 was a great victory for the Faithful. Go figure.

Arabs seem to have difficulty with logical reasoning.

As to your last point, are you familiar with Peter Jennings’s reporting about the Munich massacre? I suppose that’s Exhibit A.

By the way, the Hamas charter blames Jews for the world wars and the French Revolution, which I can understand…not agree with, of course, but I can follow the thought process. But the charter also blames us for the Rotary Club. Does anyone know why the Rotarians are considered creatures of the inimical Zionist conspiracy?

Walt is mistaken, in any case, on at least two grounds. If Israel had lost in 1948 or 1967, it’s much more likely that Orthodox Jews would have turned inwards into a sort of quietism. Yet again Walt’s basic knowledge on the situation is fault; much more likely the secular Zionists, who were much more prominent in the state building process, would be the ones to turn to violence.

But assuming for the sake of argument that they had, they might well have resorted to the sort of violence that can fairly be termed terrorism, but only of a sort.

People who are pro-Israel like to point out Israel’s creativity in many areas. But in new and grotesque forms of violence, the Arabs by far lead the way. I hold no brief for the Irgun or Lehi but spraying people in airports with machine gun fire, blowing up houses of worship in neutral countries, bombing airliners, and massacring Olympic athletes? These are forms of terrorism that are, frankly, not up to vaunted Jewish ingenuity. It was left to the Arabs to show the world not only that this sort of heretofore terrorism was possible, but that it worked.

I often wonder what would have happened if the world had responded to the Munich massacre with revulsion and disgust; how much of our current problem would not exist? But instead the response was to try to understand why people would be driven to such extremes, to respond with a measure of sympathy rather than loathing.

As those who have read my comments know, I am a credulous, trusting soul. If I were a cynic I might suggest that if anyone had murdered British or French or Japanese athletes the world might have responded differently. But, if I were a cynic, I’d say the world has always been able to be objective about Jewish deaths.