"Arthur, you're going to have to stop messing with my family," I said, standing in Arthur Harris' doorway. Arthur said, "Wait a second," and went back inside his apartment. On a hunch, I went into in my apartment, a few doors down, and got my friend, "Hank Aaron." I returned to Arthur's doorway, where he and his friend, "Jim Bowie," greeted us.

I didn't tell Arthur that I was going to kill him if he tried to step across the threshold, but that's just what I was going to do.

For thirty minutes at dinner time, we stood there. In silence. Arthur and "Jim," and me and "Hank."

I'd never seen such a big knife. Choke-a-horse big. And yet, after thirty minutes, Arthur agreed to call off his buddies. I then returned to our apartment, where for the next thirty minutes, every muscle in my body shook uncontrollably.

Now, I'm no Audie Murphy. I've always been pretty much of a coward; in combat situations, I've had to rely on keeping my wits. Most of the time, I've bluffed my way out; since I almost always had to fight much bigger, healthier opponents -- and as the last Jew in my Long Beach neighborhood, almost every day meant a fight -- I developed methods of scuffling and clutching much bigger boys to a draw.

In a poor neighborhood, if you're a teenage boy with no man or big brother around, it's incumbent on you to protect your mother. If necessary, you kill for her. Otherwise, your choice is to stay and die, or run and hide. (Not that my mother held that view; she was a good "liberal," which almost got me killed on many an occasion. She has since been mugged out of the worst of her socialist excesses.)

In the Mideast, the "neighborhood" wishes death on Israel. "Palestinian" suicide bomers have turned the killing of Jewish women and children into entertainment for enthusiastic, Arab masses. "The international community" idealizes genocidal "Palestinian activists," and demonizes every Israeli response short of surrender. Things have gotten so bad that Israel's Arab neighbors, including "moderates" like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, are smelling blood, and getting ready to strike. Because this is war.

Speaking of Mubarak, he was able to get away with slaughtering dozens of Egyptian demonstrators, without suffering in the eyes of "the international community."

The historical irony of Israel's present situation, is that, founded as a secular, socialist state in the wake of the Holocaust, the Jewish state's biggest allies are probably conservative, evangelical, American Christians ... and Germany.

When Jews pray at the holiest place in all of world Jewry, the Wailing Wall (aka "the Western Wall") on the edge of the ruins of the Second Temple, Arabs try to murder them with stones and bricks. Yet "the international community" is silent, unless Israeli police act against the would-be murderers, at which point it showers the Jews with contempt. Can you imagine the howls of protest if the Jews went into the mosques and stoned the imams who routinely call on worshipers to kill Jews? But maybe that's what the Israelis need to do -- or at least shut down the mosques, and arrest the imams. Because this is war.

The contempt for Israel is so strong, that a group of American anti-Semites, calling themselves "Christians," has decided to go to Israel and act as "human shields" to protect Arab Nazis against Jewish police and troops. Why don't these "Christians" go to Zimbabwe, and act as "human shields" for the besieged white farmers, whom dictator Robert Mugabe's black partisans daily rape, maim, murder and rob of their land? Easy: The "Christians" know that black racists would shoot them down like dogs. The "Christians" know they can count on humane treatment from the very people they condemn. And that's why they condemn them! You don't condemn people you fear.

These "Christians" are not in the humanity business; they are terrorists who are fighting on the Arab side, but who are too dishonest and cowardly to admit it. They must be shot down, because that is what you do with enemy soldiers, whether or not they wear uniforms or carry weapons. Because this is war.

The Jews have been so careful to avoid killing innocents, that they engage in pinpoint assassinations of PLO leaders, and then are condemned for that! Secretary of State Colin Powell demands of the Jews, that they show "restraint," in the face of mass murder. But the Jews must take off the gloves. Because this is war.

When Israel crushed her Arab enemies in the Six Day War in 1967, much of the world celebrated her. But as "Palestinian" Nazis have grown more violent; as Yassir Arafat's PLO has violated every agreement it ever made with Israel; as the PLO has been exposed as a kleptocracy of cronies who steal the billions the U.S. gives it, while leaving the "Palestinian" population to starve; "world opinion" has come increasingly to embrace the Nazis, and lose its affection for Israel.

A popular tack employed against the Israelis, is the "law" argument. Matthew Rothschild, the editor of the socialist magazine, The Progressive, insists that "at its roots, this conflict has almost everything to do with Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, now in its thirty-fourth year, and with the illegal settlements that Israel has erected.

"Israel is the colonialist; Palestine the colonized. And, in the end, the colonialists lose. That's what happened to the Brits in India, the Belgians in the Congo, and the French in Algeria. And it's going to happen to the Israelis, as well.

"The only question in my mind is how many hundreds or thousands of innocent people will needlessly die before Israel comes to its senses and withdraws, once and for all, from the Occupied Territories."

But Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, acting in self-defense against Arab armies numbering "250,000 troops, 2,000 tanks and 700 front-line fighter and bomber aircraft," all amassed to destroy her, as columnist Sidney Zion recalled, writing in the New York Daily News on June 5, 1997, commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Six Day War.

Not to mention, that the West Bank and Gaza are just small potatoes to the PLO, which considers all of Israel "Palestine," and which sees the West Bank and Gaza as just installments in its plan. That is what Arafat teaches Palestinian children in his PLO schools, which teach children to sing of killing the Jews, and whose textbooks show only "Palestine," in the place of Israel. Ten years ago, a "Palestinian" teenager working in an Arab deli in Manhattan, showed me a pendant hanging from his neck in the shape of Israel, and declared, "You see this? This is Palestine."

By what logical alchemy does the "mark" become the "mugger"? Ah yes, it's that same word game that self-described leftists play with domestic issues. The "Palestinians" have been defined as "third-world" and as "people of color," while the Israelis have been defined as "Western" and "white." Thus, in any conflict, the Israelis are automatically wrong. For racial socialists, like say political scientist Andrew Hacker, the author of Two Nations, it's the same as when a black American mugger maims a white man: the black "victim" is merely fighting back against his oppressor, and evening the score.

And so, Matthew Rothschild, seeking to paint himself as a moderate, informs us, "I deplore the Palestinian suicide bombers who have attacked Israeli civilians....

"But I also recognize that Israel has been intentionally killing innocent Palestinians, and I recognize that the victims, since the second Intifadah began last fall, have been overwhelmingly Palestinian."

I challenge Rothschild to tell me which innocent Palestinians Israel has intentionally killed.

Israel was not obliged to return any lands that it conquered in the Six Day War. That's the way it goes: When you attack another country -- or in this case, attempt to attack another country -- and lose, the other country gets the spoils of war. When Germany lost The War, we gave the Soviets control of the Germany's eastern sector, and they in turn gave East Prussia to the Poles. There was no international uproar about the legality of what the Russians did, because the Germans were unpopular. So much of the administration of the law -- real law, in a nation of laws -- is corrupted, based on whether a person is politically popular. As anyone who follows the Rogues' Gallery known as the United Nations knows, in matters of the fiction called "international law," things are that much worse. Talk of "international law," is just a rhetorical scam, to get over on people.

The Israelis were foolish enough to agree to return land won in the Six Day War to Egypt, in the first "land for peace" deal at Camp David in 1978, and now the Egyptians have a safer route to attack Israel. Weakening themselves did not make the Israelis more popular with "world opinion," either.

As long as the Arabs are identifiable as Arabs, they will seek to annihilate Israel. That is how Arab identity works.

If there is another Holocaust, the BBC will not weep for the Jews. Matthew Rothschild and June Jordan of The Progressive will not weep for the Jews. Nor will Christiane Amanpour & Co. at CNN.

Likewise, on the right, we can count on Justin Raimondo and Charley Reese, both of whom apparently think Will Rogers said, "I never met an Arab suicide bomber I didn't like," to continue condemning the Jews, while either cheering on the Arabs, or at least observing a respectful silence in the face of Arab atrocities.

Although I'm not sure Pat Buchanan still counts as "right," ten years ago he wrote a Holocaust-denying newspaper column, during the 2000 election he made a point of reaching out for Arab support, and many of his followers in the "Buchanan Brigade" repeated every blood libel the Arab Nazis could invent against the Jews (e.g., murdering Arab women and children through poisoning their drinking their water).

When Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D, CT) was nominated last year by Al Gore to be Gore's vice-presidential running mate, black anti-Semites in the Democratic Party, among them Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA), played the "dual loyalty" card. I expect rightwing anti-Semites to do the same. German Jews had a problem with "dual loyalty" and identity conflicts, once Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933. But America is not Nazi Germany; a Jew can support Israel and be a patriotic American. But we will hear that there are no anti-Semites on the right, only opponents of "Zionism" and "neo-conservatism"!

Besides, what the anti-Semites on the right, with their sudden fondness for Arabs, don't want to admit, is that the guerilla war against Israel is a proxy or practice war for America's enemies. The Arabs use virtually identical expressions of hatred for the Jews and for America, even as they live off American welfare. And if the Arabs succeed at destroying Israel, they will be coming for America next. A guerilla war against America would receive the support of the same "Christian human shields" and atheistic communists who have embraced nationalistic Moslem terrorists, and have prayed for the Jews to be driven into the Sea.

Fortunately, Raimondo, Reese, & Co. are still relatively exceptional on the right. The irony for students of history, is that in America these days, Israel, which was founded in 1948 as a secular, socialist democracy, still has much more support on the right -- particularly among devout Christians -- than on the left. Among journalists, George Will and conservative Christian Cal Thomas are two of Israel's staunchest supporters. But Israel's "amen corner" in Congress doesn't speak in as loud, or as unified a voice as it once did.

Some of Israel's American enemies may point to obnoxious neo-conservatives such as Bill Kristol and John Podhoretz as causes of anti-Semistism, but that dog won't hunt. When American Jews were poor and powerless, say 100 years ago, white gentiles were as openly anti-Semitic as blacks are today.

In the event of Holocaust II, the world will not weep for the Jews. It only "wept" the first time, because America won the war, and because many Jews were influential in America, particularly as members of the Roosevelt/Truman administrations. And so, anti-Semitic voices were stifled. Though today's anti-Semites speak with a forked tongue, they are stifled no more.

But there is nothing forked-tongue about Arab anti-Semitism. Take Sheik Ibrahim Madhi of Gaza. Please. "Blessings to whoever saved a bullet to stick it in a Jew's head."

Unlike in Holocaust I, influential Jews are working for the Arab cause. Some of these -- e.g., the Israeli "post-Zionists" -- are Nazi intellectual collaborators. In other words, they present something truly new. So much for the value of novelty. Every prominent Jew who speaks of Arafat as a "peace partner," who diminishes Arab atrocities while condemning Jews' right to self-defense, who denigrates Israel as "imperialist," is working for the Nazi side. Some of the collaborators apparently do so out of a bottomless stupidity, mixed with a homicidal hatred for their Jewish political opponents. One of the worst such Jewish appeasers was the late, but not lamented Leah Rabin, the widow of assassinated Labor prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Mrs. Rabin always spoke kindly of Yassir Arafat, while doing whatever she could to destabilize the government led by former Likud prime minister Bibi Netanyahu.

We have appeasers in spades on this side of the Atlantic, too -- the State Department has for years been lousy with them, as has the New York Times (reporter Deborah Sontag is deserving of special mention for her yeoman efforts on behalf of Arab Nazism), and any number of leftwing magazines like The Progressive, The Nation, etc.

As I once heard a military man say of an enemy, "You cut them off, and you kill them." That military leader used bulldozers to bury enemy soldiers alive in the desert sand. If then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, then leading American forces against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, could speak and act that way in the Gulf War, so too can Israel speak and act that way in dealing with the PLO. Because this is war.

Israel's choice is simple: Permit the Arabs to continue their guerilla war, interrupted by occasional "negotiations," in which the Arabs stop killing Jews just long enough to wring more concessions out of them, until the Jewish state's resolve has been sapped, and the Arabs kill all of Israel's Jews, or drive them out of Israel; or kill all the Arabs or drive them out of Israel. Since I do not believe in genocide, that leaves the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel -- back to the same Arab "allies" that have expelled them so many times before.

No nation is obliged to sign a suicide pact. If the Jews permit their mortal enemies to remain in their midst, then genocide will be inevitable -- with the Jews again on the short end. Because this is war.