Sometimes I think that Thomas Friedman is the most educated level-headed thinker on issues regarding the Middle East. There's other times like today, when I wonder what he's smoking. This is my first offical "fisking" of someone's work. If you don't know what that means, ask me in the comments and I'll be glad to tell you.

Friedman states that "One could easily do a revisionist history of 9/11 and show how it was simply the opening salvo in an attempted coup within Saudi Arabia - with the attack on America meant only as a bank shot to undermine one of the main supports of the Saudi ruling family." And the bombings in Africa, Bali, etc.? These were meant to threaten the Saudi royal family?

He writes further that "Some 26 years ago Anwar Sadat responded to the food riots in Egypt by going to Jerusalem to make peace with Israel." This doesn't seem to have prevented the Egyptian government from sponsoring anti-Semitism and producing miniseries based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But wait there's more - "The way to reduce these fires - which will only worsen with the growth of Muslim populations in Europe - is by forging a solution to the Palestine issue along the lines of the Clinton plan. Nothing would do more to extinguish this new anti-Semitism than an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal". Does he mean the deal that Israel accepted and the Palestinians rejected out of hand?

And now the piece de resistance - "Unfortunately, right now both the House of Saud and the House of Sharon prefer to buy time by relying on police rather than political initiatives. In the long run, this won't work. Both need to take on their Wahhabis: the Muslim Wahhabi extremists who are choking Saudi Arabia's future and the Jewish Wahhabi settlers who are doing the same to Israel. " First he compares the democratically elected Sharon to the House of Saud, then he compares ALL settlers to Wahhabi extremists. I don't remmeber the last time I read about a school in the settlements teaching children to hate their neighbors and declare holy war against all Muslims.

I wonder if he thinks the Palestinians should have a say in any of this?