Not for the first time, a journalist proves an adept reporter but lousy analyst. Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times today recounts in “Hugs from Iran” some of his experiences during a recent road trip in Iran. Excerpts:

• My 1,700-mile road trip across Iran began with a giddy paean to America, reinforcing my view that at the grass-roots level, this may be the most pro-American nation in the Middle East.

• while Iranians are far from monolithic, one feature was ubiquitous: the warmth of Iranians when they discovered I was American.
• “We love America!” gushed a former military commando, now a clothing seller, my first evening in the spiritual center of Mashhad. He was so carried away that I thought he might hug me, and although he acknowledged that his business was suffering greatly from Western sanctions, he said he blamed his own leaders. “I can’t blame America,” he said. “I love America too much.”
• our trip was slowed by hospitality, for Iranians kept giving us presents or inviting us into their homes.
• Compared with my last visit, in 2004, people seem more discontented — mainly because of economic difficulties caused in part by Western sanctions. Those sanctions are causing bitter pain, yet a surprising number of Iranians seem to largely blame their own leaders for the woes.
• I think that the expressions of love for America reflect, in part, the intuitive embrace by many Iranians of whatever the state media condemn.

After providing this information – which tallies with what other travelers to Iran have recounted – Kristof reaches an inexplicable and illogical conclusion: “My guess is that the demise of the system is a matter of time — unless there’s a war between Iran and the West, perhaps ignited by Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. That, I sense, would provoke a nationalist backlash and rescue the ayatollahs.”

Comment: Whence this “sense”? If the Iranian population blames the mullahs for its economic woes today, why not assume it will also blame war on them too? (June 14, 2012)

Most disturbing, however, is the tendency to ascribe Islamist terror to diminished mental capacity. As Teri Blumenfeld notes in the current issue of the Middle East Quarterly, “Muslims who kill in the name of their religion frequently evade punishment in Western courts by pleading insanity or mental incompetence.” In Western courts, indeed, defense lawyers routinely attribute acts of jihadi murder to insanity.

Ignoring the religious and ideological roots of Islamist terrorism carries a heavy price; not thoroughly investigating the Kahane assassination meant overlooking materials that could have prevented the World Trade Center bombing in 1993; and Merah’s apprehension sooner would have saved lives. Islamism must be squarely faced to protect ourselves from future violence.

Judging from news reports, one might think that Palestinian nationalism has been active as long as Jews and Arabs have been living at the eastern edge of the Mediterra­nean Sea. And as Yasir ‘Arafat rides high since his declaration of a Palestinian state, there is an understandable tendency in the West to accept at face value his insistence that the Palestinians have always sought an independent Palestinian state. In fact, this is far from the truth.

The idea of an Arab state resting between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is, rather, a twentieth-century concept. In­deed, its origins can be traced with surpris­ing precision to a single year — 1920. In January 1920, Palestinian nationalism hard­ly existed; by December of that critical year, it had been born.

The events of 1920 encapsulate the current successes and tribulations of the Palestinian movement. They foreshadow some abiding themes, such as the potential for rapid change and the major role of the Western powers. They also provide insight into the most widely supported but possibly the least successful nationalist cause of this century.