At the very last moment, PA figurehead Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) got cold feet. Fearing flak, he canceled the awards ceremony in which the PLO’s highest medal of heroism was to be conferred on five women – all convicted terrorists behind Israeli bars. Continue reading →

Jimmy Carter’s peace-partner Khaled Mashaal wasn’t joking. Hamas’s Damascus-based kingpin may have been deliberately thumbing his nose at us – or try ing to rub our nose in it – but there was no hint of levity in his recent interview with Sky News. Reporter Tim Marshall asked Mashaal why Hamas fires rockets at Israeli kindergartens. To this Mashaal responded with deadpan ostensible earnestness: “We didn’t attack a kindergarten. We have primitive weapons. I ask the international community and the Americans to give us more advanced weapons so we can shoot more accurately.” Continue reading →

There are two types of inveterate peaceniks, like there are two types of incurable smokers. The first variety adamantly refuses to consider conclusive evidence about the detrimental effects of tar and nicotine. Exhaling vaporous clouds from their nostrils, type-one sorts attest to the virtues of their harmful habit. Not only do they continue to light up, but they preach to the rest of us to consume more packs. The more we smoke, the more we’ll deserve being counted among the beautiful people – by their own say-so – stronger and saner than all others. Continue reading →

Rare is the temptation to turn over any of one’s finite column space to another’s op-ed ruminations. But Gilad Sharon’s recent Yediot Aharonot piece – “It’s all about hatred” – is one such irresistible exception.

Every sentence by Ariel Sharon’s younger son deserves to be chiseled in stone. Gilad’s straightforward truths should be resonated at home and abroad – often, loud and unequivocally. His words ought to be uttered morning and night by our current premier – the elder Sharon’s one-time lackey deputy – and by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who got where she did by deftly sucking up to Gilad’s father and hitching an opportunistic ride on his coattails. Continue reading →