It wasn’t all that surprising to hear that Britain’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, publicly mourned the death of the arch-terrorist and spiritual head of Hezbollah, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. After all, Britain is the country whom, we now know, did a deal with Muammar Kaddafi in 2007 to grant BP oil drilling rights in return for the release of the Lockerbie bomber, the worst mass murderer in British legal history.

Still, Guy’s praise for the terrorist,
describing him as someone who made you into a better human being, seems
unhinged. “I remember well, when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a
Muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get
a chance to meet Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Truly he was right…You
knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the
real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets,
no matter what their faith… If I was sad to hear the news I know other
peoples’ lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him.”

Hmmm.

Tell that to the families of the 300
American Marines and Embassy personnel who were killed in a massive suicide
truck bomb attack in 1983 that Fadlallah personally sanctioned. Tell it also to
the families of the Western hostages of the 1980’s in Lebanon who were
kidnapped and lost years of their lives at Fadlallah’s command. Tell it
especially to the Israeli civilians who have lived and died under Hezbollah’s
rockets from Lebanon, all authorized by Fadlallah. Just imagine what would have
happened to Guy had she publicly lamented the death of an unrepentant IRA
terrorist who murdered hundreds of British civilians and then died peacefully
in his sleep. Does Britain make a policy of employing Ambassadors who are
certifiable?

But even more puzzling is the New York
Times column about Fadlallah penned by Tom Friedman, a man for the whom the
line between right and wrong is increasingly blurred by the day.

Recall that three weeks ago Friedman
wrote a column accusing Israel of employing ‘Hamah rules’ in Gaza, thereby
comparing a thriving democracy battling Hamas, a terrorist organization that
fired thousands of rockets at its citizens, to a bloodthirsty tyrant in Syria
who mowed his people down with tanks when they dared rise up against his brutal
regime.

Now, in his column on Fadlallah, Friedman
begins by condemning CNN for firing its senior editor for Middle East affairs,
Octavia Nasr, after she tweeted that she was ‘sad to hear of the passing of’
Fadlallah, adding for good measure that the terrorist was ‘one of Hezbollah’s
giants I respect a lot.’ Friedman concedes that Nasr’s posting was ‘troubling,’
but not because she lamented the death of a terrorist but because ‘reporters
covering a beat’ undermine their credibility when they ‘issue condolences’ for
the people they cover.

If that amorality weren’t wacky enough,
Friedman then begins to personally praise Fadlallah, quoting Richard Norton of
Boston University who said that Fadlallah supported women and ‘was not afraid
to speak about sexuality,’ adding that ‘he even once gave [a mosque sermon]
about sexual urges and female masturbation.’

In the long line of recent bizarre
columns by Friedman, this won wins a prize.

For the record I too am a cleric who
writes about sexuality. My book “Kosher Sex” has appeared in seventeen
languages throughout the world and its follow up, “The Kosher Sutra,” was
likewise a best-seller. Having been raised by a single mother and as the
 father of six daughters, I too am a strong advocate for women. But I have
a sneaking suspicion that if I were the spiritual head of a genocidal terrorist
movement who publicly preached about the need for more suicide bombs against
children then notwithstanding how many lectures I might give about masturbation
it would not save me from being seen as a monster. Friedman’s train has simply
left the tracks.

But lest you conclude that the three-time
Pulitzer-prize winner has lost all sense of morality and has lost the ability
to condemn murder, he does confess that Fadlallah “was not a social worker. He
had some dark side.” Well now, Tom, you don’t say. Really?

Dark side, Tom, is Mel Gibson who is a
racist and misogynist. But even Mel hasn’t killed anyone or advocated that
civilians be blown up (at least not yet). But here is Fadlallah in a 2002
interview with The Daily Telegraph: “I was not the one who launched the
idea of so-called suicide bombings, but I have certainly argued in favor of
them…. [the Palestinians] are in a state of war with Israel. They are not aiming
to kill civilians but, in war, civilians do get killed…” Fadlallah is, of
course, lying through his teeth as the first target of a suicide attacker is
civilians which is why, after the Mercaz HaRav
massacre in Jerusalem of 6 March, 2008, when a Palestinian gunman
walked into a Yeshiva and shot eight Rabbinical students dead, Fadlallah called
the attack “heroic”. While some Imams courageously ruled that suicide
bombings were against Islamic law, Fadlallah defended the religious basis for
these terrorist attacks to The Daily
Star.

The State Department officially
classified Fadlallah a terrorist and, according to Bob Woodward, it was the CIA
who, in 1985, was behind an attempt to kill Fadlallah with a car bomb in
Beirut.

Fortunately, not all journalists have
abandoned reason when it comes to Fadlallah. The London Telegraph‘s
executive foreign editor Con Coughlin
wrote of Fadlallah, “When you look back at his track record you can see he was
right up there with other infamous terror masterminds, such as Abu Nidal and Carlos the Jackal.”

I recently wrote that Tom Friedman is
often difficult to read because he seems enraptured with his own genius. But
nothing excuses a level of arrogance that rewrites the Western world’s most
cherished values, among which ‘Do not murder’ is the most simple and basic.