HONG KONG ON THE WEST BANK: Jerry Pournelle has this suggestion:

Imagine that Israel draws a boundary, and expels all the Palestinians from within it; we hope with compensation. What’s outside is now Palestine.

The world gives Palestine a present: the Brits get to run it, rule of law, police, courts, exactly as they ran Hong Kong. This will go for 25 years after which there will be an election.

No taxes: the government is paid for by the international community. There can be some money for infrastructure but again the Brits administer all this.

Think of Hong Kong 1950 and again in 1975. Palestine would be richer than socialist high tax Israel.

Of course it won’t happen.

Of course not. Who wants to be rich, free and at peace? No warlords do, that’s for sure.

UPDATE: A dissatisfied reader writes:

I’m actually kind of tired of the use of Hong Kong (or Singapore) as the representative model of colonialism. The Brits DID have Palestine, and they did nothing but help screw it up. I would expect Jerry to have a better grasp of history.

Well, not every place can be Singapore or Hong Kong — can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, after all.

EMAIL UPDATE: Sometime correspondent “Reinhard Heydrich” pours scorn on the notion that there were 100,000 people at the pro-Israel rally. He may be right about the numbers (there were about 54,000 extra metro users that day, though of course not all protesters used the Metro). But it seems kind of odd that he’s bitching: doesn’t he believe that a Massive Jewish Conspiracy runs everything? And if so, why shouldn’t they be able to turn out 100K protesters? Nazis are losers, Reinhard. You guys weren’t even as good as the Communists at mass murder, though I’ll grant that you gave it your best efforts.

Anton Riviera (whose name is likely about as genuine as Reinhard’s) is mad that I’m not publishing more emails from him. One was quite enough, thanks. Hey Anton: get your own blog. Or just read The Mirror.

RADLEY BALKO has posted an account of his experiences at the antiglobo/anti-Israel protests today in Washington. Excerpt:

“Bush Is Hitler,” read one sign. “Free Trade=Holocaust” read another. “IMF, International Mother Fucker,” read one particularly uncreative poster. One guy dropped all pretense and went with, simply, “Fuck America.” Drum circles broke out, and just in front of us, a quintuplet of spiraling, hairy college girls in sundresses and sneakers began chanting something about “profit is the enemy,” and “George Bush is a ho! IMF has got to go!”

There’s a lot more. Go read it to see what terrible shape the antiwar left — at least this part of it, and this is pretty much all there is at the moment — is in.

WORTHWHILE CANADIAN INITIATIVES: Jim Bennett has a column on Canada today. Also, you can leave messages of condolence (for the friendly-fire incident earlier this week) and support on this Canadian Forces message board.

ANTIGLOBO UPDATE: They’re showing some of the speeches on C-SPAN. I just caught a few minutes of some rather shrill-voiced woman from “Muslims Against Racism” calling for solidarity with Cuba and North Korea because “we are all Palestinians.”

Her chief complaint, as best as I could make out, was that “they are using our tax money,” for this war and that’s wrong because it’s a use of tax money that some taxpayers don’t approve of.

Welcome to my world, sister.

THE NORWEGIAN EMBASSY RESPONDS: Reader Terry Hinshaw got this email, and shared it with me:

The Royal Norwegian Embassy has taken due note of your comments to the incident in the Norwegian Parliament last week, when a young man was requested to leave his outer garment – displaying a small Israeli flag on the chest pocket – in the cloak room before being re-admitted to the Parliament restaurant. The staff acted of the basis of administrative procedures of the Parliament, which require that outer garments be checked in the cloak room.

It should be underlined that the incident was not politically motivated. Nor does the incident reflect any change in Norway’s position with regard to the situation in the Middle East.

The Norwegian government has repeatedly given its full support to the U.S. efforts to stop the violence and seek a negotiated solution to the conflict. We share the objective of an immediate cease-fire, an end to all violence, an Israeli retreat and a dialogue between Israel and the Palestine Authorities. In a statement issued on April 17, Foreign Minister Jan Petersen expresses his concern for the current situation, and calls on both parties to implement recent resolutions by the U.N. Security Council.

Israel has many friends in Norway. The young man visiting the the Parliament last week is only one of them. Their consititutional right to voice their opinion has not been and will not be restricted.

Yours sincerely,

Jon-Åge Øyslebø
Counselor for Press and Cultural Affairs
Royal Norwegian Embassy
Washington, D.C.

Hinshaw comments that “It sounds like an after-the-fact rationalization for what happened in their Parliament. . . .” Maybe so. But at least they realize now that — to coin a phrase — the whole world is watching.

DAVID BERNSTEIN sends a link to this story from the New York Times and notes:

Israel says it blocked access to aid groups because of danger from booby traps. The aid folks accused Israel of making up lame excuses. Well: “As relief agency officials and human rights activists swarmed around the camp, an Israeli Arab doctor stepped on something that exploded, blowing him
off his feet. Writhing in agony and bleeding from the leg, Wael Omari, part of a delegation of physicians, was stretchered away to an ambulance by shocked colleagues. The blast was a sharp reminder of the dangers posed by unexploded ordnance and booby-traps.”

Yes. Although strangely the Times story doesn’t mention that the aid groups had failed to take the Israeli warnings seriously. But we do get this quote from an ICRC staffer: “It took six days for the Israeli army to let us into the camp, but now we have fairly free access on a daily basis.”

BOB KUTTNER IS WORRIED. He’s afraid that we’ve reached an ideological tipping point in favor of conservatism.

Funny, a reporter just asked me that as part of an interview, which in a way is evidence that Kuttner may be right. On the other hand, he seemed to think that I am a conservative, and that InstaPundit is part of the tipping. Well, if I am I’m a pro-cloning, pro-gay-marriage conservative who wants to see Mars made earthlike and settled by humans. If that’s conservatism, I’m your man!

And that underscores the problem. Conservatism, as that term is used by a lot of people, doesn’t mean much more than skepticism toward, well, the likes of Bob Kuttner. So if it triumphs, will it really be that huge a change? For Bob Kuttner, maybe.

GREAT OPENING PARAGRAPH in this piece by Mike Lynch on the Supreme Court’s virtual-kiddie-porn opinion:

“What the Supreme Court has said here is that ‘child pornography’ has to involve children,’” Mark Kernes, a senior editor at Adult Video News, told The New York Times. “And what a shock that is.”

What’s interesting to me is how uncontroversial this opinion turned out to be.

THE SPEED OF THE BLOGOSPHERE: Well, I managed to tout the InstaPundit Store (now featuring thermal commuter mugs and ladies’ tank tops!) for a couple of days before somebody else caught on and started doing the same thing. Damn those war profiteers anyway!

UPDATE: By the way, if you can get me a picture of Condi Rice in the InstaPundit baby-doll t-shirt I’ll give you a free shirt, mug, or whatever. Even the coveted red-white-and-blue InstaPundit office basketball goal!

MY LAW SCHOOL CLASSMATE GENE SPERLING has an oped in the Washington Post today calling for lots of education as a form of international aid. I like this idea, but I see some problems.

People are pretty sensitive to what you teach their kids. The countries that need aid are disproportionately thugocracies. Such regimes usually want to indoctrinate the kids, not teach them. Would we wind up funding something like the Palestinian schools, which are an endless program of hate-the-jews indoctrination? Or the Pakistani madrassas, where all they teach kids is how to memorize the Koran in Arabic, even when the kids don’t speak Arabic?

And if we tried to give them a real education, wouldn’t it create a huge backlash?

None of this means it’s a bad idea, just that there are a lot of bumps in the road. And it’s not worth doing at all if it winds up simply subsidizing anti-American indoctrination, which seems likely to me if international aid organizations are involved.

JOHN ELLIS thinks McCain will run as an independent in 2004. Mickey Kaus agrees.

I’m not so sure. McCain is, pretty obviously, an egomaniac who’s addicted to the limelight. But running as an independent seems to be the sure path to political self-destruction. Look at Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. Does McCain want to do that? Or is he so egotistical that he thinks it’ll be different this time?

THE SARGE has a nice piece on the limitations of sloganeering.

THE ANTIGLOBO PROTESTS have already produced their first violent incident. Which is one more than the pro-Israel protests produced, I believe.

Of course, as the link shows, they got publicity out of it. Perhaps at the next pro-Israel rally the crowd should stone the Saudi embassy or something? It won’t be their fault if they do, you know — just an expression of “desperation” and “hopelessness” in the face of media bias.

RADLEY BALKO is going to infiltrate the anti-globo protesters today. He’ll be posting updates on his website later on. Check ’em out.

PAUL CONRAD: The new Ted Rall? Matthew Hoy thinks so.

UDPATE: Reader Simon Hawkin adds:

While looking at the cartoon you referenced, I realized the airplane flying low towards the two minarets must have been hijacked. Since the airplane has the Star of David markings, it must be Israeli, and the hijackers are Palestinians or their sympathizers. I am sure, however, that this is not what the author of the cartoon had in mind.

Meanwhile, Robert Musil adds some supporting detail to Hawkin’s hypothesis, noting that:

I believe the two towers featured in Conrad’s cartoon are not mosques. They appear to be the towers of the Christian Bethlehem Church of the Nativity and another church nearby. [Scroll down to “Church of the Nativity” and click on the little magnifying glass to enlarge the tiny picture.]

So we can conclude that Conrad’s drawing is either (1) an incredibly subtle piece of anti-Palestinian propaganda, since it shows a hijacked El Al airplane being smashed into two Christian churches, presumably by Palestinians; or (2) an incredibly inept piece of anti-Israeli propaganda, since it shows a hijacked El Al airplane being smashed into two Christian churches, presumably by Palestinians. Having visited his website and seen his other work, I don’t think subtlety is his hallmark, so I’m going with inept for now. But I could be wrong.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, I think it’s safe to rule out subtlety. Reader Scott McKim sends this link to another tasteless airplane cartoon by Conrad from last fall.

ERIC OLSEN SAYS NPR IS HOPELESSLY BIASED, and cites as evidence today’s report on Jenin.

THIS STORY CLAIMS AN IRAQI CONNECTION TO THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING: Do I believe it? I don’t know. Many aspects of that story didn’t add up, and it’s no exaggeration to say that connecting the American right wing to that bombing saved Clinton’s presidency (read George Stephanopoulos’ memoirs on that if you doubt me — and note the smarmy role played by Dick Morris). That certainly provides a motive to cover up the foreign connection, especially if the case was suggestive but not airtight. But this is only evidence, not proof.