Amazing. The Wall Street Journal’s Op Ed page today has found a way to support Netanhayu’s latest efforts to further radicalize the Middle East crisis. Not even the Jerusalem Post, on its Op Ed page yesterday, could find sanity or sincerity in Netanyahu’s resolution to oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, which the Likud approved, despite the opposition of Sharon:

From the Jerusalem Post:

Just last month, Netanyahu wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Only under tyranny can a terrorist mindset be widely cultivated. It cannot breed in a climate of democracy and freedom…[It] is imperative that once the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the free world, led by America, must begin to build the institutions of pluralism and democracy in their place.”

Netanyahu was right about democracy, but one might think that if he was serious about these beliefs he would congratulate Sharon for not only integrating the concept of democracy into his conception of Palestinian statehood, but for convincing the United States to do so as well.

The Jerusalem Post not only questioned his sincerity, it also questioned his veracity:

It is strange for Netanyahu to claim that he never supported the idea of a Palestinian state, when it was obvious such a state would have been the end result of the final-status talks that he tried so hard to initiate.

Which is awfully close to calling him a liar.

The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, willingly contorts itself into semantic knots to back Netanyahu, at the expense of its own internal logic. First, the defense:

What [Likud] did do is make clear that they do not want a state in the West Bank and Gaza, one that was free to raise an army, amass military materiel and sign treaties with nations hostile to Israel.

But then the legitimacy of this argument is splendidly undermined later in the article:

Of course, it is possible for a state to be constituted in such a way as to ameliorate some of these dangers; in the wake of World War II fears of renewed aggressive Japanese imperialism at some future date led to the creation of a state that was constitutionally prevented from building or fielding an effective military.

So the WSJ explains it clearly is possible to offer a “state” to the Palestinians that doesn’t threaten Israel. With Japan, the US successfully defused future seeds of Japanese resentment by offering it the dignity of equality with other states. And if the WSJ explains that “what the land occupied by the Palestinians is called is much less important than what it is,” why then does the WSJ not draw the obvious conclusion from its own arguments that Bibi Netanyahu’s resolution is just meant to humiliate Palestinians?