Michael Freund has the number of Muhammad Dahlan, the new Palestinian “security ace.”

Passover may be behind us, but there is one plague that continues to haunt much of the region: wishful thinking. And, if the past decade is any guide, it is an affliction that may prove as deadly as those described in the story of the Exodus.

Take, for example, the media’s inexplicable romance with Muhammad Dahlan, the new Palestinian minister for state security.

The New York Times this week labeled Dahlan the “Palestinian security ace,” as though he were a beloved hero from an action film.

The Miami Herald called him a “moderate,” while the Associated Press said he was “urbane” and “carefully coifed.”

What the guardians of the public’s right to know neglected to mention is that Dahlan has a nasty habit of trying to blow up schoolbuses full of Jewish children. On at least three separate occasions in the past six years Dahlan has reportedly been linked to such attacks.

His first attempt came on April 1, 1997, when Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up outside Netzarim and Kfar Darom in Gaza in an attempt to hit two Israeli schoolbuses packed full of students. In both cases, miraculously, no Israelis were hurt.

The chief of general staff at the time, Lt.-Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, said the bombers were wearing Palestinian police uniforms and that at least one, and possibly both, belonged to Dahlan’s Palestinian Preventive Security Service (The Jerusalem Post, April 2, 1997).

Undeterred by his first failed attempt to kill Jewish kids, the “moderate” and “urbane” Dahlan tried again. On October 18, 2000, a busload of 40 Israeli women and children was attacked by gunfire and a bomb west of the Gush Katif junction in Gaza as it passed near a Palestinian police station. In this attack, too, no one was injured, but it was certainly not for lack of trying.

Two days later, Israeli intelligence concluded that Dahlan himself was behind the assault (Israel Radio, October 20, 2000).

And there’s a lot more. Read it all, and weep.