Well, okay, then. According to CNN, al-Qaeda has issued a statement that acknowledges that UBL is dead and then goes on to engage in some vituperative temper-tantrumming. I’d note only one part of it, for the record.

It said that Americans “will never enjoy security until our people in Palestine enjoy it.”

Other than that it is filled with promises to never stop attacking us until Judgment Day comes and God/Allah can decide the matter of who is in the right.

Palestine was never the only, or even the primary, motivation al-Qaeda had for attacking us, but it has always been a reason. The continuing occupation of Palestinian territory by Israeli settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces presents our country with a serious security threat. It costs us a lot of money to protect ourselves from that threat, and there is good reason to believe that the threat would be vastly reduced if some agreement were to be reached that was satisfactory to Palestinian leaders. In fact, if we can believe this missive from al-Qaeda, we could eliminate the threat entirely by winning security for the Palestinian people.

This is a basic fact that our media will go to almost any length to prevent us from learning.

Does it mean that we should throw the Israelis overboard as allies and impose some one-sided solution on them that they find wholly unacceptable? No. But we ought to make it plain to the Israelis that the status quo, which is actually a steady entrenchment and expansion of the settlements, is too risky and expensive for us to bear, and that they must make peace and make significant concessions. Like, now.