A New York Times op—ed :praises Hezbollah for fighting under Islamic laws re: advance notice, discrimiantion in selecting targets, and proportionality. How obtuse can the New York Times editorial board be when choosing to run an op—ed that actually praises Hezbollah for its principled fighting tactics? In a piece comparing Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, points out the serious "selling points" of Hezbollah (such as successfully sending rockets into Israel), among them: "... Hezbollah's statements focus on the politics of resistance to occupation and invoke shared Islamic principles about the right to self—defense. Sheik Nasrallah is extremely careful to hew closely to the dictates of Islamic law in his military attacks. These include such principles as advance notice, discrimination in selecting targets and proportionality." This seems to be a willful misrepresentation of history from a professor at a...(Read Full Post)