This is most intriguing: of course the trend (unmentioned in the Dem-vs.-Rep partisan fervor) is that the Dems have run extraordinarily out-of-the-box candidates (like James Webb) in those states where they hope to top vulnerable incumbents. It’s a sharp turn to the Clintonite center that is so loathed by the netroots.

Now Arianna Huffington implies that even Howard Dean has turned right:

Howard Dean just finished a jaw-dropping interview with Lou Dobbs on CNN, seemingly designed to inspire voters in states where the polls haven’t closed to just stay home. Among the lowlights, he promised voters they wouldn’t see Democrats “cut-and-run” in Iraq (is that what he thinks Jack Murtha’s plan is?), called for a “thoughtful” exit from the country after it’s been “stabilized”, and told Dobbs “there isn’t much we can do to change the president’s policies” in Iraq [when the transcript is posted, I may have to change a word or two in this last quote since I'm doing it from memory, but, trust me, this pretty much what he said].

Even if the Dems win big tonight, there are going to be a lot of unhappy netroots and lefty Democrats (not least because their Great White Hope, Lamont, lost. What a shame).

Because we’re so focused on the terrible situation in Iraq, the foreigner everyone loves to hate today is Ahmed Chalabi, who graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine recently.

However belatedly, David Ignatius lowers the boom on a much more important Middle Eastern player: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005 and one of the most dangerous operators and obfuscators that the Beltway has ever known (emphasis mine).

He was the Gatsby of foreign affairs: entertaining Washington’s elite at his mansion overlooking the Potomac; exchanging secret favors with a string of presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush; lobbying for Saudi weapons purchases so effectively that he trounced even AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group; operating as a deniable arm of the CIA in covert operations around the world. …

Bandar’s brash style was so mesmerizing that it could lead observers to forget the fundamentals. He was so American, with his big cigars and his hard-partying ways, that he made Americans think that Saudi Arabia must be as modern and cosmopolitan as Bandar himself. In his embrace, presidents allowed themselves to forget that he represented a secretive, repressive Muslim kingdom that survived because it had made a pact with puritanical Wahhabi clerics who despised America. That was the problem with Bandar’s glittering role here: As with the fictional Gatsby, the lavish parties and the intrigue disguised a darker reality. That hidden truth finally became apparent when al-Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into buildings that symbolized America, and it turned out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

Back in August 2002, in the run-up to the war in Iraq (when he was allowed to hold and publish independent opinions) and before he became the titular head of a news operation that regularly—and gleefully and casually—disgraces itself with its breaches of national security, Bill Keller wrote an op-ed called “The Loyal Opposition” in which he mentioned, in passing, that some “Republican foreign-policy luminaries” who were skeptics of the idea of war against Saddam

spend much of their time courting well-paying clients who would rather not rock boats in the Middle East.

Who knows what role Bandar played in all this. As Clive Davis suggests, we may have to wait a long time to find out.

All that socialising, all those guests: perhaps one day a novelist will give us the full story. I don’t imagine a member of the gilded elite will want to own up to what really went on.

Me, I think Bandar and the Saudis warrant a congressional investigation. But I’d read the novel, too.

David Margolick is a blithering, empty-headed, ignorant idiot.

Reviewing David Mamet’s new book Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews (which I haven’t read, and which sounds pretty muddled from Margolick’s description—which is disappointing, since Mamet has a place of honor in the “reference room” of this blog for a fantastic essay he wrote in the Forward in December 2002), Margolick writes breezily:

On Israel, Mamet’s problem isn’t timing but oversimplification. That Israel represents so much of what he admires in contemporary Jewish life, that he has become the lineal descendant of another Hollywood figure — Ben Hecht — should not blind him to its faults, nor lead him to caricature its critics. Not all Jewish criticism of Israel is self-hatred, and not all gentile criticism is anti-Semitic. Jews who sympathize with the Palestinians are not necessarily neurotic. Few Jews consider Zionism “criminal,” and are there any who condone suicide bombing? And, by the way, not all Israeli crimes are “imaginary.”  …

It’s hard to be a Jew. But in this day and age, it’s also easy: one gets little if any flak for it, and there are many, many ways to honor Jewish tradition, every bit as lovingly as Mamet does. Open-mindedness and tolerance are two.

Right.

We should be especially tolerant of those fellow Jews whose special mission it is to separate American liberals from their attachment to Israel. (And of those who kiss the feet of that brave lone warrior against Israel.)

We should be open-minded toward two eminent professors who, in the name of American interests (and hiding behind the figleaf of their academic stature) have launched a subversive attack on American Jews who support the cause of a Jewish Israel, whom they accuse of dual loyalty and of manipulating American foreign policy.

Furthermore, we should forget about the appalling anti-Semitism that is flaring up all over the world (way too many links), and just go about our business in our little cocoons. Right?

Wrong, of course. But I’m not in the mood to expound today.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. This will be a recurring feature after I set up a page.

Meanwhile, here is the Los Angeles Times “reporting” on an 18-year-old Palestinian female who detonated herself at an Israeli checkpoint yesterday (emphasis mine):

An 18-year-old Palestinian woman strode defiantly toward an Israeli army checkpoint and blew herself up Monday, slightly wounding a soldier in the latest act of resistance among women to the occupation of the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

Suicide terrorism is not “resistance.”

Suicide terrorists are not “freedom fighters.”

Why does the American media glorify murderers?

Why do editors of American newspapers permit inflammatory language to distort their reporting?

Could it be that the stewards of the press, like John Kerry, live in such a bubble that they don’t even realize how they betray their mind-set in their “reporting”?

I am sick to my stomach.

I held my nose, particularly as I voted for Andrew Cuomo, and did my duty as a citizen.

In April 2002 he was screaming about an Israeli “massacre” of up to 500 people in Jenin.***

Now when he criticizes Israel, Palestinian negotiator (a lifetime position, apparently) Saeb Erekat is reduced to spouting diplomatic language worthy of Kofi Annan:

“I urge members of the international community to take the appropriate response to Israel’s crimes in Gaza,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. “Condemnation is the least one would expect.”

Yes, I consider his measured remarks progress.

So, I’m sorry to have to say, is this: there was no international media event in Gaza a couple of days ago after Israeli forces opened fire on armed and dangerous extremists hiding—literally—behind chador-clad women, who, at the urging of radio broadcasters, had gone to their aid and rescue at a mosque, where they were hiding out.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinian women acting as human shields between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen hiding in a Gaza mosque on Friday, witnesses said, before the gunmen escaped. The dramatic events came on the third day of an Israeli assault on the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the largest operation it has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months

Then in today’s New York Times we read about the hideous neglect and mistreatment of women by Palestinians as a society.

Discriminatory laws, traditional practices and a severe shortage of emergency shelters combine to perpetuate violence against women by their family members and intimate partners in the Palestinian territories, according to a report to be issued on Tuesday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog group. …

The offenses include domestic violence, rape, incest, child abuse and violent responses to so-called honor crimes, like adultery, that embarrass the clan, family or community.

Laws dating from Jordanian and Egyptian administration in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively do not fully protect the rights of women, the report says. It notes, for example, that the laws provide reduced penalties to men who kill or harm female relatives who are accused of adultery, allow only male relatives to file incest charges on behalf of minors and absolve from criminal prosecution rapists who agree to marry their victims and remain married for three years.

While Palestinian society disintegrates before his very eyes, Ismail Haniyeh, resister par excellence, tries to play the masscre/slaughter card:

Haniyeh called on the international community to interfere and stop the Israeli operation. He expressed astonishment over the global silence over Israel’s military operations in the past three days.

“I call on everyone to carry the responsibility for the killing of women, children and elderly. I call on anyone who calls on us to make concessions to take a good look at what is happening here, to witness how Israel is daily massacring the Palestinian people,” he said.

Haniyeh declared that Israel’s actions would not manage to break or subdue the Palestinian people, and all of its cohorts in its scheme against the Palestinians will not achieve their goals. “This is not an escalation,” he said, “but a slaughter approved at the highest Israeli level, against everything Palestinian.”

Let’s see how this tactic works for him. Reportedly, Hamas and Fatah are close to a deal on a unity government, for the 672nd time. Wait: that was a couple of hours ago and I can’t fine a good link.

But it has been superseded by Mashaal’s threat to kidnap more Israelis, and his urging Palestinians never to accept the terms of the Quartet (chief among them, of course, the recognition of Israel’s right to exist—i.e., recognition of reality).:

Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal threatened on Tuesday that Hamas would kidnap more IDF soldiers if Israel does not free all Palestinian prisoners.

In an interview with Hamas radio station Voice of al Aksa, Mashaal added the kidnappers would stick to their demands until Israel “emptied them of their substance.”

The Hamas leader-in-exile also called for an establishment of a Palestinian Authority unity government on the basis of the prisoners’ document but stressed that such a government must not adhere to the demands of the international quartet.

Some progress, eh?

——–

*** Erekat’s defenders on the Internet are busy trying to “prove” that he didn’t call Jenin a massacre. Here’s a reprint from a CNN transcript on April 15, 2002, which proves that his defenders are liars. Erekat tells Bill Hemmer he stands by his original words (if not the numbers—i.e., he claims there was a “massacre”):

And I stand that there were crimes committed in this refugee camp. This was a flagrant violation of international law. And I stand by the term “massacres” were committed in the refugee camp. And I know for sure that witnesses told me that they dug graveyards and have buried a lot of people…

Imelda of the Twenty Thousand Pairs of Shoes launches a collection of cheap jewelry.

From the celebrity-rehabilitation files: Read about O.J. Simpson’s attempted comeback here.