Tul Karem has been the source of more bombers and atrocity perpetrators than any other West Bank city, and most of the attacks on Netanya have come from there.

Moments after the Israeli army evacuated Tul Karem it was once again under the firm control of terrorists. A few hours later terrorists from "liberated" Tul Karem transported a suicide bomber to Haifa where he blew up a bus and murdered nine people. One was an economics student at Haifa University on his way to reserve duty. This was George Bush’s and Colin Powell’s contribution to the war against terrorism and evil.

Nothing better illustrates the iron law that says that any relinquishing of ANY Palestinian area from Israeli martial rule produces nazi atrocities, while martial rule produces tranquility. No emerging terrorists attacked any civilians all week from ANY Palestinian town under Israeli military control.

Israel would not have come into existence without leaders who were willing to say NO to the United States. The US pressured Ben Gurion NOT to declare statehood. He did anyway. Eisenhower and Dulles forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai in 1956 and so were directly responsible for Nasser’s aggression in 1967 and the Six day War. In 1967, the US State Department insisted it could not locate the documents with the promises given Israel in 1957 that the Straits of Tiran would never be blockaded. The dog had eaten it.

In 1973, the US demanded that Israel forego any pre-emptive strike against its attackers and the result was a war with nearly 3000 Jewish deaths. After the war Kissinger demanded repeated Israeli capitulations and withdrawals. In 1991, the US demanded that Israel sit passively while it was showered with Iraqi SCUD missiles. For decades the US has insisted that the only permissible Israeli response to Palestinian and Hizbollah atrocities is turning the other cheek. The US demands that Israel withdraw at once from the "Palestinian" territories in the West Bank.

Israel would never have been created without Israel saying NO to the United States and it will not survive now without saying NO. It remains to be seen whether Ariel Sharon has the backbone to do so. Let us see what part of NO he understands.

In Israel, the military and the political elite have been dominated for decades by timidity, by "restraint", by gentleness, by passivity. And in the same Israel, the Supreme Court is dominated by combativeness, by warlike aggressiveness, by contentiousness, by ferociousness.

Israel will not survive unless these two roles are reversed.