Brad Greenberg of The Jewish Journal’s God Blog reported that Muslim lobbyists are delighted by the current-events chuckles of Jon Stewart on Monday’s Daily Show addressing the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. There’s video there, and you can see why: Stewart whacks Israel for their “civilian carnage Toyotathon” while Bush it still in office, and says Israel decided to “check this off their F— It list.” Stewart also typically ran a clip of Bush from a few weeks ago touting new trust in the Israel conflict, then shouted at him “Do you know anything?” while the crowd screamed its delight. If this is your idea of comedy, you probably are a member (or a likely future member) of Code Pink.

Greenberg writes:

I just got an e-mail from the Muslim Public Affairs Council applauding this segment from Monday’s episode of The Daily Show.
“The segment entitled ‘Strip Maul: Israel gets their bombing in before January 20th hope and change deadline’ was superb. Our staff and members appreciated the honest and critical attention brought to the extremely one-sided news reports about the Gaza crisis that have dominated the airwaves,” MPAC…wrote in the letter to Jon Stewart and Friends.
“As huge fans of the show, we congratulate you for using humor as a tool to encourage critical thinking… We appreciate The Daily Show’s critical eye, quick wit and fantastic humor.”
I’m a big fan of Stewart, but I think he treats Hamas way too lightly in this segment, and he too flippantly dismisses the 10,000-plus rockets that have been launched from Gaza during the past six years. I did, however, laugh at the text that appears below the headline “Israel Invades Gaza”—”Missile Tov!”

Stewart also mocked American politicians for uniformly supporting Israel and not being fair and balanced: “It’s the Mobius strip of issues. There’s only one side!” Jon Stewart is a Mobius strip of partisan snark.