Op-Dread

The good folks at the Middle East Media Research Institute must need hazmat suits and strong stomachs to wade through the sludge pumped out by the Middle Eastern press every day.

Here's today's roundup of editorial opinion across the region.

This editorial from an Iranian daily is all too typical of the rest:

The Muslim peoples and many other peoples think that, in global geopolitics, there is no such thing as the state of Israel, and that the [entity] which presently bears this name is a usurping and rootless state that has imposed its parasitic presence over the region and over Palestine with the support of the arrogant powers. [This entity] invents a new crime every day. It causes men, women, and innocent children to bleed to death, or else deports them from their homeland and turns them into refugees. In light of this 'problem,' which is perfectly obvious, the annihilation of the Zionist regime is not only a religious and national duty, but also a universal human duty, from which no Muslim or free human being can be exempt.

Comprehensive support for Hamas and Hizbullah, political, logistically, militarily, and through sending combatant forces to this front are the minimal price that the Islamic countries must pay in order to maintain their own security and independence...

And that's considered mild commentary over there. It wouldn't be out of place on the Daily Kos or Rabble, and might even pass muster on some mainstream newspaper editorial pages here (with a little editing to smooth out the rough edges).

I'm waiting for the first progressive blogger or mainstream media commentator to go beyond the pale with their usual condemnations of Zionism and Jews in general, and suggest that maybe the Nazis had the right idea with the Holocaust, after all.

The mask will slip eventually from someone's face.