Speaking of spoiled children in Europe, now the EU is whining that Israel had better not kill the terrorist Arafat, because he’s an elected leader.”

What a crock. Even leaving aside the illegitimacy of his “election,” would they have said in 1943 that we shouldn’t have assassinated Hitler, because he was “an elected leader”?

Sadly, many of them probably would. And for those who say that assassinations are a bad idea because they may result in retaliatory assassinations, phooey. You have to consider the asymmetry of the situation.

Hitler’s brutal Germany (and Saddam’s Iraq–he was “elected” too, with almost a hundred percent of the vote) were those people personified. Kill Hitler or Saddam, and you kill the regime. On the other hand, in a true constitutional republic, a state consisting of laws rather than men, killing the head of state would simply result in a smooth transition to his replacement, and the war would continue with renewed ferocity.

Now arguably, unlike the Nazi Party, the PA might survive Arafat’s demise, but that’s no reason not to remove him. He is the murderous enemy of the state of Israel just as surely as bin Laden is ours, and he makes himself a legitimate target by his continued actions.

I suspect that what the EU is really worried about is that, with Arafat’s death, as with Saddam’s downfall, a lot of dirty laundry may come out in terms of the depths of the corruption of their dealings with him. Old Yasser reputedly has a some pretty sizable European bank accounts. How much of his thievery has he been kicking back to the Eurocrats?

[Update at 1 PM PST]

With whitewashes like this, we probably won’t find out as long as Arafat, or someone like him, continues to run the Palestinian Authority. Iraq was hardly the only swamp that needs to be drained over there.

She said: “This form of assistance has been subject to more scrutiny than any other area…No one has proven a direct link, it is as simple as that”.

Pointing to the lack of convictions of the people who money is suspected of being transferred to, she added that no link has been found between them and terrorist organisations.

However, Parliamentarians remain divided over whether this legalistic definition of evidence accurately reflects the situation.

The TSA continues to drag its feet on arming pilots. Fortunately, some Senators (including, surprisingly, Barbara Boxer), are getting tired of it.

“They’ll get the message or they’ll lose their money for the program,” Bunning said. “We’ll put it somewhere where it will get the job done.”

I hope they do. I’d be happy to see this agency defunded completely. And how long is Bush going to keep Norm Mineta?

Christopher Hitchens has some questions for opponents of removing Saddam last year.

I debate with the opponents of the Iraq intervention almost every day. I always have the same questions for them, which never seem to get answered. Do you believe that a confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s regime was inevitable or not? Do you believe that a confrontation with an Uday/Qusay regime would have been better? Do you know that Saddam’s envoys were trying to buy a weapons production line off the shelf from North Korea (vide the Kay report) as late as last March? Why do you think Saddam offered “succor” (Mr. Clarke’s word) to the man most wanted in the 1993 bombings in New York? Would you have been in favor of lifting the “no fly zones” over northern and southern Iraq; a 10-year prolongation of the original “Gulf War”? Were you content to have Kurdish and Shiite resistance fighters do all the fighting for us? Do you think that the timing of a confrontation should have been left, as it was in the past, for Baghdad to choose?

I wasn’t sure about the category on this one–it could have been both space science and war commentary. But here’s the real scoop from the Religion of Peace (TM).

The fact that this is a news story is depressing. On the other hand, the story itself offers a glimmer of hope. One would like to think that the basic humanity of the people called “Palestinians” hasn’t been totally quenched by the oppressive conditions and brainwashing that they’ve endured for decades (and no, I’m not referring to the Israeli “occupation”).

Golda Meir once said that the war would end when the Palestinians decided that they loved their children more than they hated the Jews. This may be a sign that this is starting to happen.

The Vatican has actually condemned Palestinian terror tactics.

The Vatican, often critical of Israel, harshly condemned Palestinian terrorists for trying to use a teenager as a suicide bomber.

I guess it would have been all right if it was an adult murdering those Jews (and other “Palestinians”).

In Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (a movie that’s about to be rereleased to theatres to capitalize on the success of Mel Gibson’s “Passion”), there’s a hilarious scene in which a man is about to be stoned to death for blasphemy.

Really.

MATTHIAS: Look. I don’t think it ought to be blasphemy, just saying ‘Jehovah’.

CROWD: Oooh! He said it again! Oooh!…

OFFICIAL: You’re only making it worse for yourself!

MATTHIAS: Making it worse?! How could it be worse?! Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

Allison Kaplan Sommer says that, after years of intifada, this is the point that the Israeli public has reached, and why there’s little domestic opposition to Sharon’s plan to build the wall and kill the terrorist leadership.

With nothing left to lose, let’s try to do what we can to protect ourselves. That’s the sentiment of the man on the street.

Clearly, the Israeli public seems to have all but given up on figuring out how to make the right moves in order to nudge the Palestinians towards wanting a peaceful two-state solution. They’ve given up. That’s why there’s generally support for Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan — otherwise known as the “We’re So Disgusted with the Palestinians, We’re Getting the Hell Away From Them and Building a Big Wall” plan. And if they try to wage war from the other side of the wall, they’ll get the same treatment as Yassin.

We’re not running scared. We’re just sick and tired of this.

Stephen den Beste (from whom I got the link to Allison’s post) has further thoughts.

Rantisi has been given the leadership of Hamas.

Defense chiefs have decided to try to kill the entire Hamas leadership, security sources said Tuesday, a day after Israel assassinated the sheikh.

I wouldn’t want to have to shop for his life insurance.

Seventy two raisins, coming up.

“I have been to the mountain top. I have a dream.”

“I have a dream of a Palestine from the west bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

“I have a dream of blood-sucking Zionists–men, women, babies–in their ice cream parlors, sundered and bleeding by metal fasteners soaked in rat poison, dead or writhing in agony now and for years.”

“I have a dream of a Middle East without Jews, in which Arabs can mingle with Islamicists, and oppress unbelievers and women, without being offended or defiled by the oppressive Jewish race.”

“I have a dream, of a future in which people will be judged not by the content of their character, but by their religion and ethnicity. I have seen the promised land.”

Yes, we all remember how the Reverend Martin Luther King sent out children with bombs strapped surreptiously to their bellies to deliberately murder innocents, in order to seek a better life for his people.

Mark Steyn says that our supposed betters in Europe have it backwards:

In 2002 and 2003, I took a couple of two-legged, mini fact-finding trips – first to western Europe, then on to the Middle East. And both times I was struck by the way the Muslims of Araby were far less inflamed than those in the alienated immigrant ghettoes around Paris and Amsterdam. Life in the West, exposure to the self-loathing platitudes of Anglican clerics, these are the sort of things that seem to inflame Muslims. Many of the wackiest Islamists from Richard Reid to Zacarias Moussaoui to Metin Kaplan are products of the enervated Europe symbolised by the Rev Mark Beach…

…[The Islamists’] most effective guerrillas aren’t in the Hindu Kush, where it is the work of moments to drop a daisycutter on the mighty Pashtun warrior. They’re travelling light on the bridle-paths of Europe – the small cells that operate in the nooks and crannies of a free society, while politicians cling to the beaten tracks – old ideas, multicultural pieties and a general hope that things will turn out for the best.