The Lobby Strikes Back

by David Frum

Behold the insidious reach of the Israel lobby. Andrew Sullivan takes a holiday and he invites me of all people to join Dave Weigel as a guest bloggers. I’ll be cross-posting all this week here at the Daily Dish and at my own site, FrumForum.com.

Now - time to rethink the Middle East!

We’ll start with the Economist’s cringing obituary of the Lebanese Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah:

“Once damned by Westerners as a mentor to hostage-takers and suicide-bombers, he was viewed by his own flock as the most open-minded of ayatollahs.”

Sound familiar? Yes, life imitates The Onion once again …

IRAQI GANDHI PREACHES SLIGHTLY LESS VIOLENCE

"Violence is not the solution," al-Naqib wrote in his breakthrough 1998 treatise Practicing Semiviolence. "It is only approximately 19/20ths of the solution. We should not work toward the total annihilation of all who oppose usjust some of them. And perhaps it is best we practice occasional mercy for the innocent, such as the young, who can easily recuperate."

In a 2003 interview with British newspaper The Guardian, al-Naqib said that the "decadent immorality of Western civilization must be almost, but not quite, wiped off the face of the earth."