The Nissan advertisement, for the new energy-saving car being developed in Israel (and elsewhere), "shows a group of Arab oil barons enraged at the sight of a Nissan car. Their leader flies into a rage and starts banging the bonnet of his own stretch limo. He bellows (this is one of the sub-titled bits) 'My God destroy your home! Hawks should peck at you day and night. . be cursed.'"

Not part of the ad, but now a part of history, is this: 

"Then the MBC news presenter, a young woman with dyed blond hair a fetching low top and white trouser suit interviews a real Saudi Representative who declares that Nissan must be punished and boycotted and demands an apology."

The ad that should run all over the United States, once the car is on the market, and that will have fantastic appeal, would combine the original ad, and then the tape of the "Saudi Representative who declares that Nisson must be punished and boycotted and demands an apology."

If I had money, I would start buying stock in Nissan right now. With that advertisement, and with that promised car -- to be sold first in Denmark and Israel, so for god's sake hurry up -- it will be irresistible to Western consumers.

And so will all other ads that are based on an intelligent recognition that the the Saudis and other rich Arabs of the Gulf, who are raking in their ill-gotten (not gotten at all, merely acquired, through an accident of geology, this fantastic soaking up, and then piling up, and then sinisterly deploying part of) trillions, have become the object of growing fury all over the Westen world. And that energetic fury should be the fuel of a campaign to lessen the use of oil, one based not exclusively on environmental concerns, but also on the widespread recognition of how unpleasant, undeserving and dangerous those Muslim sellers of oil really are.

That kind of fury, that mounting and justified hostility, should not be tamped down. Nor should it be ignored.  These are feelings to be exploited, the way all popular passions can be exploited, for the greater good, in wartime. This is wartime. If Nissan, and other manufacturers of oil-avoiding cars, increase their sales and their market share by the use of such advertisements, and of course they will, all the better.

Even someone indifferent to or ignorant of the meaning and menace of Islam, someone perhaps concerned exclusively about what is now undeniable -- anthropogenic climate change, proceeding at a rate unheard of in millions of years -- should welcome any and all efforts to exploit popular passions for the sake of the greater good, that of getting off oil.

Besides, there is nothing good to say about the Saudis or the other rich Arabs. Their lands are cultural wastelands, and will remain so, even if a "branch" of the Louvre is put up in Dubai, with succursales of assorted well-compensated Western universities also arriving by the day, but to teach what subjects, and in what spirit, and with what reception by Muslim students, if they remain true to Islam? The point of all this branchifying and succursaling is unclear. Few Muslims can add to the store of Western or indeed to the rich store of world art, save in the most limited of ways - some archtiecture, some Arabic calligraphy, and possibly a landscape or two, or abstract curlicues, that is if they are to remain true to what Islam commands, and what Islam prohibits. That's about it.