TYPICAL FRENCH... ANTI-ISRAEL
From James Taranto... Best of the Web

Lots of good stuff from Taranto today. Here's the first one:

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the genocidal maniac who serves as Hamas's "spiritual leader," is dead, killed by an Israeli missile strike. Yassin was quite a prolific murderer. "Over the past 3 1/2 years, . . . Hamas has, in 425 attacks, killed 377 Israelis and wounded 2076," notes the Jerusalem Post. "Hamas perpetrated 52 suicide attacks, in which 288 people were killed and 1646 were wounded."
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Reuters quotes France's Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin: "France condemns the action against Sheikh Yassin. At a time when it is important to mobilize for the relaunch of the peace process, such acts can only fuel the cycle of violence." Of course, if Hamas hadn't killed hundreds of innocent people, Israel would have had no cause to kill Yassin. But there are limits. "Germany avoided condemnation of the helicopter rocket attack," the "news" service notes. We suppose it would be awkward for Germany, of all countries, to mourn the death of a mass killer of Jews.

Meanwhile, London's Guardian reports that "Yasser Arafat has apologised to the father of a young Arab man who was shot dead in Jerusalem in a botched attempt by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to murder a Jewish settler":

George Khoury, a 20-year-old economics student at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the son of a prominent lawyer, was jogging through a neighbourhood mostly populated by Jews when gunmen shot him in the head, neck and stomach on Friday night.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

As far as we know, European leaders have issued no outraged condemnations of Khoury's murder. To guys like de Villepin, it would seem, Arab lives are cheap unless they are devoted to the murder of Jews.