Richard Cohen... transformed?

Last week I called columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post) One Warped Jew. This week, well, this week he is ... not so warped. He might even be starting to "get it."

Check out today's column - . . . No, It's Survival

.... The dire consequences of proportionality are so clear that it makes you wonder if it is a fig leaf for anti-Israel sentiment in general. Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness. For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights.

.... Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price....

I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exalt and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world -- and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism....

These calls for proportionality rankle. They fall on my ears not as genteel expressions of fairness, some ditsy Marquess of Queensberry idea of war, but as ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only democratic state in the Middle East. After the Holocaust, after 1,000 years of mayhem and murder, the only proportionality that counts is zero for zero....

What happened to the man? The only possibilities I can imagine are that he read all his email over the past week OR seven days of katyushas (served up with MSM bias) scored a direct hit on his kishkes. Whatever the process, Baruch HaShem, HaKohein is now making more sense.

And Richard, it's still not too late for Tshuva (return, repentence) even for those "lacking religious conviction." You can read up at Lazer Beams:

Emuna News has been giving Olmert the benefit of the doubt, but yesterday, during his visit to Ashkelon, Olmert reiterated his commitment to give more territories to terrorists at the same time when we're trying to push terrorists from our borders. Such defeatist philosophy assures defeat, and shows that Olmert is far from Tshuva. The only power that can defeat Hizbolla is our stronger commitment to Tshuva and Torah than the Hizbolla commitment to Jihad and terror. As the world becomes more spiritual, so is the war.

Let those who seek sidewalk cafe societies move to Vienna. Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean and from Mount Hermon to Eilat, must be a haven of Kedusha [holiness] and a befitting vessel for the Divine Presence; if we don't clean ourselves up spiritually, then Hashem will have to do it for us.