THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT TRY to play a “neutral arbiter” in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. We should, in fact, be doing our best to make the Palestinians suffer until they change their ways, because, to put it bluntly, they are our enemies. Just read this post and follow the links to see how they feel about America.

And read this piece by Amir Taheri on the Iraqi “resistance,” which notes Palestinian terror connections by the Iraqi insurgents, and features a Palestinian “journalist” egging them on.

These folks are our enemies, and deserve to be treated as such. They don’t deserve a state of their own. It’s not clear that they even deserve to keep what they’ve got. (Why is Arafat still in power?) I don’t think this means that the Bush Administration should be taking direct action against them — closing off their funding via shutting down Saddam is a good start, and a policy of slow strangulation directed at Arafat and his fellow terrorists is probably the most politic at the moment. We need to try to squeeze off the EU funding, too, especially now that it’s been admitted to be part of a proxy war by the EU not just against Israel, but America.

But let’s stop pretending that what’s going on between Israel and the Palestinians is some sort of family misunderstanding. It’s war, and the Palestinians — and their EU supporters — think it’s a war not just against Israel, but against us. We should tailor our approach accordingly.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Gaffney emails that this post is “too shrill.” Well, that’s why I don’t like writing about the Palestinian issue — if you tell the truth, which is that these guys are enemies of civilization, in the grip of a psychotic death cult that will probably lead to their destruction, then you sound shrill.

I also don’t write about it much because the Palestinians, fundamentally, are the cannon fodder of other people who don’t like the United States, and the real way to resolve this problem is to deal with those other people. And so it’s those other people who get the bulk of my attention.

But the amount of pious crap spouted about the Palestinians is so vast that every once in a while I do feel the need to cut through it by pointing out the facts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now this, from a reader who signs himself “AK,” is shrill:

You should be ashamed of yourself posting such intolerant hateful bullshit. You sound like Goebbles reincarnate.

I’m reminded of the now dead hater: Barbara Olsen and how life has a way of catching up with people of your ilk.

Thus speaks the voice of the “peace movement” on the Middle East.

This, on the other hand, may not be “shrill,” exactly — but I promise it won’t sound good. And I would never subject any human being, even Yasser Arafat, to such a horror. . . .

MORE: Matt Gaffney wants to make clear that he doesn’t agree with AK. And Nelson Ascher observes:

If I understood the guy correctly, he (or maybe she) is not just in favour of capital punishment, but also thinks someone might deserve it for a mere opinion, and that even without due process. Tell me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this what used to be called a totally anti-free speech and very, very extreme right-wing position? It is as good an example of pure totalitarianism as one gets.

Indeed. One hears that sort of thing rather a lot from the “peace” movement these days.