Jack Engelhard's recent article on Messrs. Dubner and Levitt was thought-provoking on many levels. Before pressing on to what bothers me most about this bizarre world of political self-delusion we in America appear to live in these days, I want to say that at least Mr. Levitt should be especially ashamed.

Does nobody live in gang-infested neighborhoods anymore?

My G-d, Levitt, are you not a Jew? Do you not trace your heritage to the Levites? In the name of the six million of the Jewish people who died in the ovens of another terrorist just two generations ago, how can you possibly even appear to condone the actions of people who have, in the most public and persistent ways, continually said they intend to visit the same fate yet again on us, the people of the so-called civilized world?


Does nobody live in gang-infested neighborhoods anymore? Has everybody in the United States capable of making any noise lost touch with the nature of psychotic hoodlums? From Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Billy the Kid to Bonnie and Clyde to your neighborhood gangsters - they are all the same. They don't react to killing like you do. For them, watching a mother plead for the life of her children is almost a sexual experience. At the same time, they are honest to a fault. When they say they're going to kill you, they mean it.


When you remember how those people died on 9/11, how they've been dying in Europe and all over Iraq ever since, you'll readily recall it was by suicide killers. Just think a moment: What do you offer a suicide killer not to kill? How do you stop a suicide killer? By the "expressed displeasure of the international community"?


[Hysterical laugh break.]


Back to the gang infested neighborhood - and I grew up in one, so if you didn't, then listen close. The only way you keep a psychotic hoodlum from attacking you is if you convince him he's going to die and he doesn't want to. But a suicide killer wants to die, so the only way to stop a suicide killer is to kill him first. It's just that simple. Think about it.


That said, let's now look at one of the travesties of the dismal legacy of the worst president in modern times: James Earl Carter. Now, mind you, the Civilized World gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, but, as events both before and after, have demonstrated, the Civilized World, yet again, was wrong. What Carter started doing with his peace prize machinations was what this country has been all too adept at doing ever since - abusing what is probably the greatest ally we ever had: Israel.


Before we get to the real tragedy of all this, let's return to the Arabs. Does anyone doubt Al-Qaeda intends to massacre the Jews as soon as we stop pinning them down in Iraq? Does anyone doubt that was Saddam's intention? After all the years since Carter began the policy of telling Israel "you won't have a friend in the world if you don't do what we say," can anyone doubt that the Palestinian Authority has no intention whatever of living side by side with Israelis in peace?


"Okay," you say, "but you are tarring the entire Arab world with the same brush. That's not fair."


Isn't it? Point to one Arab state today whose leaders loudly condemn acts of terrorism against Israel. Point to one Arab country whose police interdict terrorist plots to be launched against Israel. Point to one Islamic leader who condemns Jihad against the Jews. Just like the families in that gang infested neighborhood - or the Christians in Nazi

The very best of them stand mute, letting the terrorists use their lands.

Germany, for that matter - the very best of them stand mute, letting the terrorists use their lands; many others doing much more.


A bullied Israel now must face rocket attacks on her people coming from the very lands we made her give back in the name of peace - Adolf Hitler's peace, Neville Chamberlain's peace - while gaining absolutely nothing in return from the Arab world, except promises of genocide from some and complicit silence from the rest.


So, I say this: With our young men and women now killing Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan every day, it's time for the United States of America to go forthrightly a few steps further; to look these gang-infested neighborhoods of the world in the eye and then say:


"Even a dummy can smell the blood of the dead Israeli women and children our bankrupt policies in the past have helped murder. We're sorry, Israel. We're sorry for every inch of land bought and paid for with the blood of the very best of Israel's youth that we bullied you into giving back. We say we're at war with terror; well, from here on out, we're not going to hypocritically continue to exempt from that war, sub silentio, the oldest most longstanding victims of it. Any Jewish settlements left in the conquered territories stay where they are. Any attack on Israel is an attack on the United States."


It would be a welcome change - not being hypocrites. Most of the Arab states hate our guts anyway. And if there are any truly peaceful, non-genocidal Islamic kingdoms and republics out there in those gang-infested neighborhoods, then let them so state -and truly join in the war on terror with all the help we can give them. But not another inch of Israeli lands.


It's the Old Mr. Goodwrench commercials all over again, folks: pay me now or pay me later. At least if we pay the piper now, we'll still have the best ally we ever knew at our side. If we keep forcing Israel to pay for our armchair liberalism and squeamish, giggling foreplay with the enemies of Judeo-Christian civilization, as Mr. Levitt attempts, the next

Not another inch of Israeli lands.

time they come for New York we won't get off with 3,000 dead. After all, our troops will have long since been pulled from where they now kill terrorists on a daily basis, and our Islamic fundamentalist friends, with their billions of petrodollars and universal support in the Arab lands, will simply change the killing fields to America.


Right now, the Islamists fear the IDF, and rightly so. Only frightened Israeli politicians and their American tormentors can defeat the IDF. But Israelis can't continue to survive our terrible gaffes forever. The time is now.