HOLLINGS AND ISRAEL: Joe Wilson, in an an article in The Washington Times titled Words unbefitting mood of the Senate writes:

In recognition of this urgent situation, the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed S. Amendment 3389, a resolution that stated the United States and Israel were "engaged in a common struggle against terrorism," and condemned homicidal Palestinian bombings.

Seldom is the moral clarity of a subject so obvious, and seldom is the closely divided Senate ever in such agreement. Yet, Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, South Carolina Democrat, and Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, cast the only two votes against this resolution.

True to form, Mr. Hollings was not content with a simple vote against Israel. In a diatribe before votes were cast Thursday, he compared Israel's democratically elected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with the evil and brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. This is a cruel and malicious slander.

Mr. Hollings also called Mr. Sharon "the Bull Conner of Israel." For those who don't remember, Bull Conner was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who in 1963 unleashed attack-dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights protesters during the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If in Mr. Hollings' mind Ariel Sharon is a modern day Bull Conner, he seems to be comparing Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah organization is directly linked to terrorist groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to King. It also equates the evil suicide-bombings being carried out by Palestinian terrorists to the protests of the civil-rights movement. This type of logic is out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans.