The Scriptorium

It looks like kidnappings are on the rise in Gaza. Hopefully, a rise in beheadings won’t follow, but it would be truly un-Islamic if it didn’t. I do have to question the Palestinians’ intelligence level on this one. They’re getting everything they want from the Israelis, and the rest of the world is pressuring Israel to give them more. Why would they want to ruin that by kidnapping foreigners, especially in Gaza, where the world is looking for results? Even less logical, their ransom demand isn’t even being made to a foreign country. They’re demanding that the PA include them in the security forces. Even if the Palestinians did consider kidnapping school teachers to be a terrorist act (which they won’t since they don’t even consider suicide bombings to be terrorism), do these “gunmen” really think kidnapping civilians makes them qualified for a job in security? “Hey, make us part of the security forces, so we can kidnap more foreigners”. It may be, however, that I’m just not thinking like a Palestinian, and am not considering the depths of their evil. Hamas did win the elections, after all.

Palestinian gunmen abducted two foreign teachers from an American school as they were driving north of Gaza City on Wednesday, witnesses said.

The foreigners were identified only as a Belgian and a Dutch. Their car was stopped by unidentified armed men who forced them into their vehicle and drove them to an unknown destination.

The school administration confirmed that two faculty members were missing and sent its students home.

About 100 students are enrolled in the elite private school, north of Gaza City.

The kidnappings took place a day after a group of gunmen threatened to abduct foreigners if their demands to be folded into the Palestinian security services were not met. These armed men denied involvement in Wednesday’s kidnapping.

Militant groups have kidnapped foreigners in increasingly chaotic Gaza recently, usually as bargaining chips to get relatives released from Palestinian prisons, secure jobs from the
Palestinian Authority or settle personal scores. The kidnappings have all been brief, and the hostages have all been released unhamred.

The American school should have known that only Muslims are allowed to live or work in Palestinian territories. Everyone else must leave their homes and lives behind, and get out. But, don’t you dare call them intolerant, racist, or bigoted.

The French and Russians (who obviously opposed the war for a reason) are responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqis. While liberals are making up whoppers about all the innocent Iraqis U.S. troops have killed, and John Kerry is accusing our troops of terrorizing women and children, they might want to take a break and notice who provided Sadam Hussein with all of the bombs currently being used by terrorists in Iraq. It’s kind of hard to disarm a dictator through diplomacy when your “allies” are shipping weapons into the dictator’s country like there is no tomorrow.

U.S. soldiers in the northern Iraqi desert dug up more than 1,000 aging rockets and missiles wrapped in plastic, some of which were buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said Tuesday.

Commanders in the 101st Airborne Division said an Iraqi tipped them off to the buried weapons, perhaps an indication that residents in this largely Sunni Arab region about 150 miles north of Baghdad are beginning to warm up to coalition forces (But how can that be? Murtha said. . . .-ed.).

“The tide is turning,” said 2nd Lt. Patrick Vardaro, 23, of Norwood, Mass., a platoon leader in the division’s 187th Infantry Regiment. “It’s better to work with Americans than against us.”

“This is the mother load, right here,” Sgt. Jeremy Galusha, 25, of Dallas, Ore., said, leaning on a shovel after finding more than 20 Soviet missiles.

The weapons are of primary concern for soldiers in
Iraq, where bombs made with loose ordinance by insurgents are the preferred method to target coalition forces.

“In our eyes, every one of these rockets represents one less” bomb, Vardaro said.

Vardaro would not comment on whether there were signs the caches had been used recently to make bombs. But service records accompanying the missiles dated to 1984, suggesting they were buried by the Iraqi military under
Saddam Hussein.

Still, the plastic around some of the rockets — of Soviet, German and French origins — appeared to be fresh and had not deteriorated as it had on some of the older munitions.

A U.S. Air Force explosive ordinance team planned to begin destroying them as early as Wednesday morning.