The global cartoon crisis continues to escalate. So today Condi Rice calls it like it is:
"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes, and the world ought to call them on it," she said at a joint news conference with Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.
I rag on Condi a lot, so I'll give her extra bonus points for this observation. But equally noteworthy was Syria's response:
Although Tehran did not immediately respond, Syria's ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, denied Rice's accusation and tried to turn the blame for the violence on Israeli and U.S. policy decisions unrelated to the cartoon row.
"We in Syria believe anti-Western sentiments are being fueled by two major things: the situation in Iraq and the situation in the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza," Moustapha said.
He added, "We believe that if somebody would tell Secretary Rice that Syria is not the party that occupies Iraq and is not the party that occupies the West Bank and Gaza, then probably she would know it is not Syria who is actually fueling anti-Western sentiments."
Leaving aside the all-too-predictable knee-jerk attempt to deflect a controversy that involves neither Israel nor the United States onto (who else?) the Jooos, perhaps somebody should tell Mr. Moustapha that the party that currently occupies Gaza is called the Palestinian Authority. He seems to have missed the memo.
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In other 'toon headlines, some more journalists stand up for free speech.
NEW YORK -- The editorial team at the New York Press resigned after the alternative weekly newspaper decided not to run the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have set off a worldwide furor.
And the Arab News demonstrates once again just how widely it continues to miss the mark:
JEDDAH, 9 February 2006 — Muslims are expressing further disappointment with the Danish newspaper that published sacrilegious cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) after The Guardian of London reported that the same publication had earlier refused to run cartoons of the Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) contending they could be offensive to readers.
An editor at Jyllands-Posten dismissed the report maintaining that the Jesus cartoons were “unsolicited material†and “silly†as protests against the blasphemous cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad claimed three more lives yesterday.
