Two journalists kidnapped in Gaza were released unharmed today after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam.

The two journalists from Fox News — Steve Centanni, 60, an American reporter based in Washington, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a freelance cameraman from New Zealand — were held for 13 days in an abandoned garage in the Gaza Strip as hostages of a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.

You idiot! You total blistering idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death - being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people - literally millions - have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States - they don't think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase "released unharmed" into their lede. Way beyond certain.

There's a deeper explanation for how paragraphs like this can get written. It's not really bias, as much as it is the blind spots imposed by any ideology. And within that dynamic are questions about the degree of myopia and the room for self-reflection that particular ideologies allow. But don't worry about that right now. Just bask in the beauty of the phrase "released unharmed... after being forced at gunpoint to say... that they had converted to Islam"

HUME: Yes, and what an appealing faith these thugs must believe Islam is, that conversions have to be effected at the point of a gun. And what of the argument that all of the ills and troubles that beset the Palestinian people, that lead them to terrorism, are the cause of what they endlessly refer to as the illegal Israeli occupation.

Consider the latest rounds of trouble in Gaza and Lebanon, two places from which Israel has withdrawn.

It has been noted that not for one day after the Israeli pullout from Gaza did the rocket attacks that came from Gaza ever stop. We’re not dealing here with something that is susceptible to a political resolution of the kind of which the State Department and many a president has dreamed.

We’re dealing here with a lawless enemy whose goal far transcends any side-by-side, two-state solution. That isn’t going to do it. We’re dealing with a terrorist, gangland-style enemy, which I think it’s fair to conclude, and this episode only further illustrates it, must be defeated.

WILLIAMS: I don’t think there’s any question that these people have been beaten down, occupied, oppressed, and that you’re going to say, all of a sudden, you know what, it’s gangland. All true, Brit, but you’re saying because, suddenly, Israel pulls back, you expected that immediately there would be hats off, hey old fellow, have a beer on me?

These people, not only is their chaos, they don’t really have a government. And, as you know, there have been sanctions put in place against them and their government because of the activities of Hamas.

HUME: I can imagine the conversation that must have unfolded, Bill, in which these hoodlums sat around in a basement somewhere and decided that because of the sanctions that have been imposed on the Palestinian Authority and the leadership of the terrorist organization Hamas that they must go out and snatch a couple of unarmed, innocent Americans and hold them at bay and then force them to convert to Islam by gunpoint.

Somehow, Juan, I just don’t see the connection.

Are you kidding, Juan?

WILLIAMS: I just don’t think it’s going to be an instantaneous turnaround to a peaceful, organized group of people after the horrors that they have been through and their history of fighting against Israel and the deep enmity that exists.

I mean, it’s a horrible situation, but to say, oh, because the Israelis pulled out, that they should behave now in a better way. We should not have any more problems.

HUME: Well, Juan, let me ask you this. Should they behave better?

WILLIAMS: I was hoping that they would behave better. I hope that they will organize themselves. I think Bill and I would agree that the reasons the sanctions were put in there was because people view Hamas as a terrorist organization and you want…

HUME: With good reason.