Fresh from explaining that some of the Iranian mullahs’ best friends are Jewish, Roger Cohen of the New York Times/International Herald Tribune weighs in with another column sure to generate copious applause among the suicide bomber set.

He begins by applauding Britain’s decision to open talks with Hezbollah. “The United States should follow the British example,” he writes. “It should initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah.” As it happens I’m in Beirut at the moment, and members of the March 14th pro-democracy movement here are appalled at the British decision.

They point out, first, there is no such thing as the “political wing of Hezbollah”; the entire organization is devoted to terrorism, the domination of Lebanon, and the furtherance of Iranian interests. It is ludicrous to think that members of a Hezbollah “political wing” are unconnected with the members of the Hezbollah military wing who are stockpiling missiles to hurl against Israel.

Lebanese democrats note, further, that this is the worst possible time for outreach to Hezobllah, coming as it does just three months before Lebanon’s June 7 parliamentary elections which will determine the future course of the country. Hezbollah and its Syrian masters are trying hard to prevent the March 14th movement from winning a majority of parliamentary seats, and being given the imprimatur of legitimacy by the United Kingdom will surely aid its cause.

But Cohen doesn’t end the bad ideas there. He writes: “The Obama administration should also look carefully at how to reach moderate Hamas elements and engineer a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.” Isn’t “moderate Hamas” an oxymoron? What is a “moderate Hamas” member anyway — someone who wants to drive the Jews into the sea but not fire at them as they are pulling away on leaky rafts?

Cohen goes on to whitewash Hamas in ways that are as repugnant as they are unconvincing. “The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile,” he writes, “but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance – although it has offered a decades-long truce – but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.”

Perhaps Hamas is sincere? Why exactly would the Hamas charter proclaim that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” if that were not in fact an expression of the group’s mindset? Or why would a Hamas leader proclaim as recently as January of this year that “We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity,” if he was just having us on? Surely Hamas’s rocketing of Israel even after Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip should convince even Cohen that they’re not kidding.

To compare Hamas’s genocidal attitude toward Israel with Israel’s generous, if understandably ambivalent, attitude toward a Palestinian state (remember when Ehud Barak was offering to turn over more than 95% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip?) gives moral equivalence a bad name. Cohen concludes with a nauseating slam against Israel’s amply justified war of self-defense in the Gaza Strip: “The Gaza war was a travesty; I have never previously felt so shamed by Israel’s actions.”

Why Cohen should feel “so shamed by Israel’s actions” is a matter for him to discuss with a good counselor. But for foreign policy purposes, let us hope that his increasingly fashionable attitude does not represent the thought processes of anyone who might be in a position of authority in the Obama administration. Aside from Chas Freeman of course.