On The Right - problems in the Catholic Church, answering machines and e-mail, and Israel's military policy - Column

General Sharon might have sent in a platoon, pulled out Arafat and his 100 lieutenants, and executed them on the entirely reasonable grounds that they embodied the terrorist movement in the West Bank. A bullet into the heart of Arafat is not a wayward contribution to the search for the infrastructure of the evil and genocidal war against Israel. So Palestine would be left leaderless? Such a problem would be that of the Palestinians who have tolerated Arafat for so many years.

What has been done is to enhance and even legitimize Palestinian grievances. "After four days of heavy fighting," the Times dispatch goes on, "the Casbah, as the centuries-old warren of shops and homes at the center of [Nablus] is known, has been utterly destroyed."

How would we feel in analogous circumstances? What happened to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1864 at the hands of General Sherman was perceived through the lens of a great civil war, a surrender of the losing side, and the heart and mind of a magnanimous national leader who sought to heal the wounds of a nation torn asunder. Such elements aren't there in the Mideast. Sharon has wounded the State of Israel incalculably, causing ache and pain not only to Palestinians, but to his people, and to friends of Israel everywhere.

-- Universal Press Syndicate

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