By Debbie Schlussel

Occasionally, a commentator feels the need to demonstrate how “moderate” he is toward Islam.

He bends over backward to defend radical Muslims and attack America.  Just to look “balanced”.  And to get the phony mystique and “respect” that go along with it, like fries with a Whopper.

This week, the whopper is a column in the Boston Globe, and the purveyor is Jeff Jacoby.

Normally, Jeff is on the money.  In the past, I’ve defended him against trumped up plagiarism charges, when he was temporarily replaced by actual plagiarist, Cathy Young.

But this time, I can’t defend Jeff.  This time, he’s wrong.  Dead wrong.

Jeff has a problem with female U.S. interrogators using their sexuality to taunt Guantanamo prisoners.

Et tu, Jeff?

He decries female interrogators wearing tight t-shirts, fondling themselves, brushing their breasts against prisoners’ backs, and putting red ink on the face of prisoners.

This is torture?  Puh-leeze.  We know what real torture is.  It goes on in Muslim countries around the globe, every day.  In case you forgot what that is, there’s a video starring Nick Berg all over the Net.

Jacoby doesn’t come up with a better way to get information from terrorists, either.

Instead, he rehearses the same old line about “modesty between the sexes [being] a deeply ingrained religious requirement” for Muslims.

Is it just me, or is it getting beyond  annoying hearing commentators elevate Islam above all other religions?  What—modesty is not important to religious Christians and Jews?  Or are their religious requirements simply not as important as those of the religion of headchoppers?

Jeff Jacoby is a religious Jew.  Does he think his rabbi would like this sexual “torture” any more than a Muslim?

Then again, Jeff’s rabbi isn’t a terrorist—who might have information that could save American lives.  Jeff seems to have forgotten that Gitmo prisoners include guys like  Osama Bin Laden’s personal driver.  They are murderers.

Islam’s supposed sexual “modesty” hasn’t stopped Islamic terrorists from committing depraved homosexual and other sexual acts on plenty of their fellow co-religionists, in addition to Jews and Christians, in the Middle East.

Since Jeff thinks America’s sexual “torture” of Islamic terrorists is so reprehensible, here’s a little tutorial on Islamic terrorists’ own sexual behavior.  Apparently, Jeff needs a refresher course:

• Last year, followers of Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr killed and mutilated fellow Muslim Iraqis who opposed his Najaf insurrection.  200 bodies featured males with genitals cut off and shoved in their mouths and evidence of rape to men, women and children, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

• Remember 9/11 and those 19 hijackers?  Remember Mohammed Atta, who was such a religious Muslim and so worried about modesty that, in his will, he forbade women from attending his funeral?  Gee, it’s the same Mohammed Atta who got a lap dance or two from gyrating exotic dancers at Florida’s “Pink Pony” strip club–paying $300 for the pleasure.  Other hijackers visited the Olympic Bar strip club in Vegas and hired prostitutes in Boston just prior to the attacks.

• In January 1976, Yasser Arafat’s PLO massacred 582 mostly Christians in Damour, Lebanon.  Bodies were raped and featured dismembered genitals in their mouths.

• Remember Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s 2002 visit to President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas?  The calorically-gifted Saudi royal demanded that he and his posse be spared the “humiliation” of women on the tarmac or in the control tower when his plane landed in Texas.  Yet, after his visit with the President, his entourage didn’t seem too humiliated when they patronized the women jiggling their silicone valleys at Waco strip clubs.

This is the same terror-funding Saudi Arabia that demands women are covered head-to-toe.  Yet, at the time, Saudi spokesman, Adel Al-Jubeir was “dating” (euphemism?) mini-skirt encrusted NBC Weekend Today anchor Campbell Brown.  Brown covered Abdullah’s visit, yet neglected to mention his misogynist  airport requirements (and her “modesty” experiences with the Saudi flack).  Talk about “sleeping with the enemy.”

• Remember the Church of the Nativity terrorists?  Palestinian terrorists, holed up in the Bethlehem Church in spring 2002, defiled one of the holiest sites in Christianity.  They had sex there, leaving used condoms strewn about the Church.  Radio hosts Opie and Anthony got fired for encouraging a couple to have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Yet, the Nativity terrorists got a free trip to Cyprus as a reward for their “deeds.”

• In 1948, Muslims murdered several Israeli men at Gush Etzion, cut off their testicles, and placed testicles in the dead men’s mouths.

Obviously, they are religious hypocrites.  We need not bestow respect on their hypocrisy by worrying about a tight t-shirt on a sexy interrogator in front of a terrorist.

The same people who weren’t bothered by Monica’s thong and Bill’s cigars in the Oval Office seem just a tad fraudulent in their grave concern for sexuality at Gitmo.  These are the same folks who fight for porn purveyors to show unfettered smut all over America.   Yet, they won’t allow our soldiers—who may never see their wives or girlfriends again—to get Playboy in the Middle East, a restriction on our troops unique to this war and geographic area of service.  Lest we offend the Muslims.

Though Jeff doesn’t fall into that category, he cites the ACLU as a source of credibility on America’s sexual “humiliation” of terrorists.  Isn’t this the same ACLU that went to court to defend NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, for its promotion of rape and sexual torture of young boys, which—surprise, surprise—led to exactly that and murder (of 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley), too?

Oh, I get it.  Rape of young American boys – okay.  Displaying a covered female chest in front of Islamic terrorists who aren’t talking – bad, very bad.

Perhaps Jeff hopes that changing our tactics will gain us new-found respect in the Muslim world.  But like Lucy, promising this time she’ll finally let Charlie Brown kick the football, it never works that way.  They hate us, period.  Jeff’s column and making nice with terrorists won’t change that.

Next time Jeff Jacoby spouts off about U.S. treatment of Islamic terrorists, he’d best save it for his lawn.

Maybe something will grow there