My Aisling

You got a problem with that?

"I didn't ask permission from anyone," he [Sharon] said. "I want to emphasize again that anyone who kills Jews because they are Jews is marked for death." When he said "from anyone," Sharon was referring to the United States.

This statement appears to be only a story here. The Jerusalem Post is writing about tax plans and railroads.

The problems the Palestinians pose should not be Israel's to solve. The UN approved the Jewish homeland in 1949. The Palestinians didn't appear afterward. The Arab countries have made billions in oil sales, the poorer countries have been given billions in aid, yet no one wants to resolve the Palestinian people's plight.

The Arab countries in and near Israel, of course, want the Jewish homeland destroyed, defeated, defunct. If you look at every military action - from raids to wars - taken by Israel since 1949, including the wars after which Israel's borders were expanded, they can all be attributed to protection, many responsive and many preemptive.

The oil flowing from that region under Arab control has become a muffle on the mouths of Western democracies. The world caters to the Arab point of view. It is almost as if they had incriminating evidence similar to a basis for blackmail. Their blackmail, I guess, is based upon the flow of oil (yes, extortion not blackmail, I know). But that has peaked and their power is going to wane over the next two decades. The socialists of Western Europe will still kowtow to them, but the US may take a publicly stronger pro-Israel position at that time.

As for now, if Israel feels it is in its best interest to decimate the leaders of the active threats against its people, I have no problem with that.