Help Wanted

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Help Wanted
“U.S. Soldiers Search for Midwife in Afghan War Zone”–headline, McClatchy Newspapers, May 12 

If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem . . .
“Pope Benedict XVI prayed at a Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Monday, denounced anti-Semitism and appealed for Middle East peace based on a two-state deal, on his first Holy Land tour,” reports Agence France-Presse. But look how Pakistan’s News International edited the same dispatch:

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Pope Benedict XVI prayed at a Holocaust memorial in al-Quds on Monday, denounced anti-Semitism and appealed for Middle East peace based on a two-state deal, on his first Holy Land tour.

“Al-Quds” is the Arabic name for Jerusalem, and “occupied al-Quds” is the anti-Semitic Arabic name for Jerusalem. The headline in the Pakistani paper reads “Pope Insists Holocaust Can Never Be Forgotten.”

It’s to the Pakistani editors’ credit that they remember the Holocaust, but it’s curious that they’ve forgotten that Arabic is not among the official languages of Pakistan.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.