Senator Frist spoke in the Senate yesterday about “winning the war on terror,” but he also offered some remarks about his recent trip to the Middle East that, taken together with his comments while in the region, suggest that he hasn’t fully thought through some of the issues – or is out of his depth. Quoth Dr. Frist: “Both sides have to fulfill their obligations. To begin, Palestinians must dismantle the terrorist groups and stop all terrorist attacks against Israel. And for the Israelis, it is critical to halt settlement activity and expansion.”

This is, to put it kindly, an example of what, when Secretary Albright used to do it, was criticized by conscientious conservatives as “moral equivalence.” It puts Israeli home-building on a level with Palestinian Arab terrorism.

Even less helpful was Dr. Frist’s decision, according to wire accounts, to offer public praise to the longtime aide to Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, for his “tremendous leadership.” Dr. Frist’s remarks came the day after Prime Minister Sharon had told Dr. Frist that “instead of disbanding the terrorist organizations,” Mr. Abbas “is acting to strengthen them.” It was, in effect, a snub of the Israeli prime minister by the Senate majority leader.

In “notes from the road” posted on his Senate Web site, Dr. Frist passed along unchallenged Palestinian Arab claims that Israel security checkpoints are killing Palestinian children by restricting their access to emergency medical care.

Dr. Frist said yesterday that he would return today to the Senate floor “to report on my trip to the West Bank.” Said Dr. Frist, “I believe peace can be achieved and look forward to sharing with my colleagues the invaluable lessons I learned there and the information I gathered from the Palestinian point of view.”

One of the reasons President Bush was re-elected with such a healthy margin in November was his strong support for Israel. The voters sensed he wasn’t out to convey “the Palestinian point of view” but the pro-American, anti-terrorist, profreedom, and pro-democracy point of view.

Dr. Frist, a Republican of Tennessee, has built up a store of credibility on a wide range of issues. He has been vilified, unfairly in our view, for his recent remarks on religion and judicial nominations. We wouldn’t want to portray him on the basis of his recent comments as an implacable enemy of the Jewish state or as an opponent of a strongly anti-terrorist American foreign policy. In his remarks yesterday, he made a point of calling Israel a “vital friend and ally” and said that “Israel stands for what America stands for.”

Surely, though, Dr. Frist is shrewd enough to realize that if Israel is indeed a vital friend and ally, it should be able to build houses for its citizens on land to which it has a strong historic, legal, strategic, moral, and religious claim. And that Israel’s elected leader doesn’t deserve to be publicly contradicted by a senator praising a longtime Arafat aide who has failed to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. Never mind for a moment the American politics of it; purely as a foreign policy matter, if this is how America treats its friends, it is no way to win more.