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04/21/2004: "What's the difference between an anti-Semite and Pat Buchanan?"

Patrick Buchanan, a former major party presidential candidate, is the Ramsey Clark of the right, a friend of Middle Eastern terrorists and as virulently anti-Israel as any anti-Semite (which he denies being). This from a column run by the left-wing site Antiwar.com:

"Speaking of the Palestinians, they were dealt a lethal blow," exulted a jubilant Ariel Sharon, "It will bring their dreams to an end."

Sharon was bragging about his trip to Washington where he bullied Bush into selling out the Palestinians as thoroughly as Neville Chamberlain sold out the Czechs at Munich.

So, according to Buchanan, Ariel Sharon is now Hitler. Gee, who does that sound like? What he was "exulting" over was the end of the fantasy of the right to return, the demographic nuke that Palestinians dream of using to destroy the Jewish state.

And Raging Bull celebrated his diplomatic victory by ordering up a Saturday night hit on Abdel Rantisi, the Hamas leader who replaced Sheik Yassin, whom Sharon had assassinated by Apache gunship in March as the crippled sheik was being wheeled out of a mosque after dawn prayers.

Lighten up on the crocodile tears, Pat. Rantisi and Yassin were the leaders of a terrorist gang that is at war with Israel for the express purpose of destroying it. You think Sharon should have invited them to lunch and negotiated over Israel's right to exist? Oh, of course you do.

As he surely intended, Sharon left the Arab world with the clear impression that the Americans had given a green light to his "extrajudicial" killings. Sharon seeks to make his war on the Palestinians America's war. If Bush lets him succeed, we are finished in the Middle East.

"Extrajudicial"? You'd better put that in quotes, Pat. Rantisi and Yassin were enemy combatants, leaders of a military operation aimed at killing civilians. If they aren't fair game for killing, I can't imagine who would be in time of war. And Pat, if Sharon were really at war with "the Palestinians" rather than their terrorists, don't you think he'd have cleared out the whole West Bank by now, rather than leaving 3 million inconvenient squatters in place?

Gaza was captured from Egypt in 1967. Though almost all Israelis wish to be rid of it, 7,500 Jewish squatters have moved into the enclave that is home to 1.2 million Palestinians. Israelis now occupy 20 percent of Gaza, though they are but one-half of 1 percent of the population.

I don't think those settlers belong in Gaza, so I'm not going to argue that. But think about this: those 1.2 million people, what were they before 1967? If they were Palestinians, why was it all right for them to be ruled by Egypt? If they were Egyptians, when did they become Palestinians?

What did Bush give up? None of the Palestinians driven out of their homes by the Irgun massacre at Deir Yassin and during the 1948 war will ever be allowed to return. Palestinian rights in that 78 percent of Palestine that is already Israel, and in the sectors of the remaining 22 percent Sharon plans to annex, are forfeit forever. At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered Arafat a more generous peace than Bush, under Sharon's direction, is willing to give the Palestinians.

"78 percent of Palestine that is already Israel"? So I guess Pat buys into the idea that of all the world's people, it is only Jews who have no right to a homeland. They must be reduced to dhimmis living at the sufferance of Muslim rulers, who are free to kick them out whenever they wish. Yeah, Pat, that's right–more Jews were forcefully expelled from Arab nations following World War II than Palestinians who left Israel, and most of them left voluntarily because their Arab brethren assured them that the land would again be their's after the Jews were pushed into the sea. Over a million Arabs who didn't leave still live in Israel, Pat. How many Jews still live in Syria, or Iraq, or Lebanon? And did you ever utter a single word of disapproval of those expulsions?

Can anyone in the White House believe that Bush's capitulation is anything but a formula for endless war and enduring hatred of an America that cannot say no to Ariel Sharon?

Yessir, those Palestinians who danced in the streets on September 11 sure loved the good 'ol USA.

ANSWER TO THE TITLE QUESTION: Not enough to matter.