The notion that the cartoon protests that swept through Muslim nations last week were merely a spontaneous and immediate reaction is simply false. After all, the Jyllands-Posten newspaper published the cartoons last September. Hassam Fatah, writing for the NYTimes news service, details how Muslim governments (especially Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia) turned a local non-violent protest by Muslims in a small European country into front-page world news by manipulating their populations, the press and the Europeans.
Thus, Bill Kristol accurately blasts the concepts of "insult" and "disrespect" when he asserts that the "cartoon jihad" is a phony. Note that his column includes a photo of the editions of Jyllands-Posten that contained the cartoons.
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