“It’s hard to conceive how the United States will win a ‘war of ideas’ in the Islamic world when American leaders flock to a Washington conference where Muslims are publicly insulted and the U.S. officials fail to voice objections to the bigotry.

“That’s what happened at this week’s annual meeting of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee whose invitees included Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, Virginia’s ex-Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, and Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“In a luncheon speech on March 6, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman [pictured] entertained the AIPAC crowd with what the Washington Post described as ‘straight talk’, including a comment that came close to equating Islam with terrorism. ‘While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim,’ Gillerman said to the crowd’s delight.”

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com, 8 March 2006

The insulting remark was in fact a quote from Abdelrahman al-Rashid of al-Arabiya TV – which tells you something about the role played by pro-western Arab intellectuals like that.