from “An open letter to the President” (by Bill Kristol, et al., posted today to The Weekly Standard online):

You have declared war on international terrorism, Mr. President. Israel is fighting the same war.

This central truth has important implications for any Middle East peace process. For one spoke of the terrorist network consists of Yasser Arafat and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Although your critics in the United States, Europe and the Arab world suggest that you and your administration bear some responsibility for the lack of political progress between Israel and the Palestinians, they are mistaken. As Secretary of State Powell recently stated, the present crisis stems not from “the absence of a political way forward” but from “terrorism, . . . terrorism in its rawest form.” That terrorism has been aided, abetted, harbored, and in many instances directed by Mr. Arafat and his top lieutenants. Mr. Arafat has demonstrated time and again that he cannot be part of the peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He demonstrated it in July 2000, when he rejected the most generous Israeli peace offer in history; he demonstrated it in September 2000, when he launched the new intifada against Israel; and he demonstrated it again these past two weeks when, despite the hand you offered him, through Vice President Cheney, he gave sanction to some of the worst terrorist violence against Israeli citizens.

It is true that the United States has a leading role to play in the Middle East and, potentially, in resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But it is critical that negotiations not be the product of terrorism or conducted under the threat of terrorist attack. This would send a most dangerous signal to our adversaries that civilized states do not have the necessary courage to fight terrorism in all its forms.

Vocal Palestinian advocacy groups, Eurocrats, and P.A-apologists of various stripes have so succeeded in convincing mainstream U.S. media outlets that they skew “pro-Israel” that you almost never hear truly pro-Israel stories in the mainstream American press. The closest thing you get is a steady diet of those insidious “cycle of violence” pieces — the true impact of which is to discourage Americans from believing peace is ever truly possible in the region, and to frustrate American foreign policy makers into washing their hands of the whole mess. This inability to choose sides is almost certainly a product of the multiculturalist mileu, an extended historical moment that’s had the very real effect of chilling speech and dulling reason.

Thankfully, voices like those appended to the above open letter remain steadfast and focused in their analyses of the MidEast situation, aware as they are of the disjunction in the Arab world between rhetoric and reality; and thankfully, indefatiguable bloggers — unbeholden to PC-addled editors — are free to publish daily what the editors of the mainstream press deem unpublishable.