I don't know what we expect the Palestinian people to do.  God help us, but no person can be expected to endure being brutalized for thirty five years without becoming brutal—or dead.  Perhaps Ghandi could do it.  And Mandela actually did it.  But the rarity of such greatness should increase, not decrease, our compassion for those who are driven by overwhelming rage and despair to do monstrous things.  They are not like Ghandi or Mandela, they are just like you or me, and in their place I don't know if I would not do the same.

She was eighteen, an A-student.  Aayat al-Akhras was not a terrorist, but a girl who had lost any remnant of hope when she blew herself up in a supermarket in West Jerusalem on Friday, March 29.  The young security guard who tried to stop her is either dead, or will be maimed for life.  None of these people deserve the death and destruction that has engulfed them, but it does serve the despicable purposes of some old men in suits.  Sharon has no intention of tolerating a Palestinian state, and the more he can provoke them into a hysteria of self-destruction, the better.  And Bush is in league with Mr. Sharon because Bush will be depending heavily on Israeli support when he goes after Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  Besides that, Sharon's brutality with the Palestinian Arabs might just provoke Saddam, giving Bush even more reason to attack him.

But the truth, indeed, is from the mouths of babes, and these killing, dying, hating young people—both Israeli and Palestinian—indict the men in suits irrefutably for failing to lead unselfishly, for failing to put right ahead of hate, and for promoting fear in order to achieve their own ends instead of inspiring courage in order to advance the good of all. 

It is just overwhelmingly depressing.