I used to look at the ongoing problems in Israel and shake my head. There are no angels in that conflict, I used to tell myself. It's a bad deal all around, and everyone's to blame.

Then Muslim terrorists gave my nation a bloody nose.

The Arab community was quick to pay lip service to condemning the terrorist attacks, though in many cases that lip service was obviously grudging. Despite the fact that there are many patriotic Americans who are Muslims or who are of Arab descent, one was left with the impression that many Muslims were less than zealous in their defense of America -- and that perhaps they felt a certain affinity for the actions of Osama bin Laden's thugs. Over and over again, however, we were reminded -- both by those within and those looking in on the Arab communities of the world -- that Islam is a beautiful, peaceful religion of brotherly love and benevolence.

Then the television news reports started broadcasting the footage of gleeful Palestinians dancing in the streets to celebrate the butchery of innocent American civilians. They ululated at the cameras in their delight at the men, women, and children incinerated in the World Trade Center. They threw candy and smiled at the thought of air travelers whose last moments were filled with horror, fear, and despair.

My view of the Israel-Palestine conflict changed that day. I realized that the Palestinians, as a people, are a vicious group of thugs who inculcate in their young people an irrational and limitless hatred of Jews -- and of Americans and the Western world. Many people attempt to establish, incorrectly, moral equivalency between the actions of Palestinian terrorists and Israeli military troops. The critical difference is that the Israelis, while they sometimes kill children and other noncombatants in the pursuit of their counterterrorist actions, do not deliberately target civilians and minors for death. Their goals are much the same as those of the US Military in fighting terrorism: to destroy physical targets or apply social and logistical pressure in an attempt to make it harder for terrorists to act on their murderous desires, while bringing to justice those terrorists whose role in the deaths of innocents and soldiers has been verified.

The Palestinians, by contrast, don't care whom they murder, as long as those people have committed the egregious sin of being born Jewish. They're happy to murder just about any Westerner, for that matter, since the West traditionally supports Israel and has the temerity to oppose Muslim regimes that hate it. Palestinians hate Israelis so much that they'll gladly strap explosives to their bodies and die for the opportunity to murder a bus full of ordinary people. They're happy to shower a crowded shopping mall with their entrails, as long as the shrapnel formed by their bones lodges in the skulls of a few Jewish teenagers.

Arafat, for his part, loves to play the role of Palestinian statesman, while masterminding the terrorist efforts against Israel. When the Palestinians were caught recently trying to smuggle arms into Israel, it was Arafat behind the attempt. The man is an unrepentant murderer, and he belongs to a culture of death that hates everything that is not of Islam.

Lest you think I am exaggerating, let's look at a few randomly selected pieces of evidence. First, there's the survey taken a few weeks ago that indicates the majority of Muslims are either ignorant or blinded by hatred:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An overwhelming majority of Muslims say they do not believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and disapprove of the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan (news - web sites), a major survey showed on Wednesday.

Despite news reports that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis, only 18 percent of those polled in six countries said they believed that Arabs carried out the attacks, USA Today quoted the Gallup poll as showing.

Many blamed Israel or the United States, the paper said, buttressing anecdotal evidence of a huge gulf between the West and Islamic countries over the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites).

Just nine percent said U.S. military action in Afghanistan was morally justified, while 77 percent said it was morally unjustified. The United States targeted Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network, which it accuses of masterminding the attacks, and the Taliban militia, their erstwhile Afghan hosts.

In what it called possibly the most challenging project in its history, the Gallup Organization found residents of nine mainly Muslim countries viewed the United States unfavorably by a 2-1 margin, CNN said in its account of the poll.

A total of 58 percent of those surveyed had unfavorable opinions of President Bush (news - web sites), compared with 11 percent with favorable views, CNN said.

Then there's everyone's favorite network, Al-Jezeera. Al-Jezeera ran a television interview with Abdallah Bin Matruk Al-Haddal, a Saudi preacher from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Saudi Arabia, on January 22, 2002.

Of Bin Laden, Al-Haddal -- doing his best to promote the image of Islam as a religion of peace and brotherhood -- said this:

[He] waged an Islamic Jihad; he defended the oppressed people in Afghanistan... [He] will not allow the Islamic world to bow down under the infidel enemies' tyranny, under the tyranny of the U.S... ...America doesn't want to have any competitors. She wants to be all alone in this world. Osama bin Laden's demands are the demands of his nation. The nation who gave rise to Osama bin Laden is a strong and great nation. I don't believe that the attack on America [on September 11th] was perpetrated by bin Laden or the Muslims. I think differently. I believe it was a scheme. What is happening now is a continuation of an ancient attack. It is a continuation of the Jewish deception and the Jewish-Zionist wickedness which infiltrates the U.S.... I am surprised that the Christian U.S. allows the 'brothers of apes and pigs' [meaning the Jews] to corrupt it. [The Jews] have murdered the prophets and the messengers. [The Jews] are the most despicable people who walked the land and are the worms of the entire world. They are all evil. And why? Because they are deceiving and plotting aggressors...