Michael Totten draws attention to the apparent decision by Hamas to take a brief hiatus from active terror attacks in order to engage themselves in a “culture war,” which includes the production of at least one movie. Now it seems that over in the West Bank, the terrorists have started a culture war of their own. Their prime target: Bruno, aka the Jew and occasional Hebrew-speaker Sacha Baron Cohen. A few days ago, we learned that one of Bruno’s interviewees, a former operative for the Al-Aksa Martyr’s Brigade who spent seven years in an Israeli prison, was suing Baron Cohen for playing a “dirty trick” to get the interview and for implicitly portraying the ex-con as a “homo.” (“If someone here calls you a homo, it’s a very serious insult,” his lawyer said.)

And so, for just a few days, we all got to enjoy the splendid irony of an organization dedicated to killing innocent people trying to claim its right to preserve its pristine reputation as being straight — that is, of a convicted terrorist suing somebody for defamation.

But then, reason set in. “Wait a minute,” the folks at Al-Aksa apparently said to themselves. “We’re terrorists. We don’t accept Western institutions of law. ‘Doh!”

Alas, all ironies must end, either by correction or by dissolution into cliché. And so we learn that Al-Aksa has chosen the former route, issuing an apparent death threat to Baron Cohen. The supreme satirist has been forced to add bodyguards to his list of liabilities. The rest of us, however, can breathe easier knowing that terrorists can only pretend civil legitimacy for brief spurts before revealing their nefarious nature. So much for the culture war.

And whatever you do, don’t call them gay. It really makes them mad.