The Salt Lake Tribune -- Stay the Course Despite "Sharon's devastating invasion of Palestinian cities in the West Bank," the Tribune says we have to keep trying.

First of all, why is nobody pointing out the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority in this whole thing? They parcel out the money and explosives to terrorists who strap them onto young people and send them off like torpedoes. What do we expect the Israelis to do in response?

Oh, yes. They're supposed to do what the U.S. didn't do when it was attacked for the fourth or fifth time by murder-bombers. We went after the people who were behind them, but Israel has to just grin and bear it.

I think that there is some reflex among leftists to always side with the weak, no matter how depraved and nasty they are. If they do something atrocious, it's excused because of their despair and hopelessness. If they get lambasted like they deserve, the powerful side is roundly condemned for the sin of being well-armed and able to defend itself.

Israel's big sin is being educated, modern, technological and tough as nails. But the criminal minds who launch these young martyr wannabes should have thought of that before they decided to kill their parents, wives and children with shrapnel. If the Palestinians can't figure out this basic truth of survival, they deserve what they get. As far as I can see, the Israelis did not target the innocent in their incursions. The fact that the terrorists holed up in refugee camps. offices and churches made those places targets, and the ones to blame are the terrorists, not the Israelis.

As far as Europe is concerned, if you treat people like they treated Jews for the past 2000 years, and sooner or later they will decide, "Never again!" and get tough. When did England, France, the Netherlands and the rest get so concerned about the poor Arabs? It must have been after they had colonized these areas and destroyed the Ottoman Empire. Now that they are no more superpowers, they are full of solicitude and pious advice for the only really tough powers left, Israel and the U.S.

If they want to protect the Palestinians, they should intervene, guarantee Israel that the terrorism will stop and then make it happen. Then there will be peace, and not until then. We over here have had our own experience with peacekeeping, and we know that sending a bunch of soldiers armed with olive branches doesn't stop terrorists and butchers. If we send troops over there, they should do the same thing the Israelis did, which is coincidentally the same thing we're doing in Afghanistan.