This speech text has arrived to me from several sources, all purporting that it was delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A quick analysis of the rhetoric, if you've read state addresses of any sort, tells you it wasn't. World leaders don't shake their fists at each other. Bad for business unless you swing a way big stick or none at all.

It seems reasonable to think the PM might like to say what author Ben Caspit writes, though. While I have no particular sympathy to Israeli interests, nor animosity toward Arab interests -- much less any real understanding of Middle East politics -- something in Caspit's angry pronouncements rings true with me.

American media reaction to attacks on Israel often amounts to a bemused teeth-sucking: "Another car bomb. That's tough." In the wake of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon, however, the outrage I've read has me both dumbfounded, and recalling the rhetoric during the initial invasions of Afghanistan.

Hezbollah has provoked and wanted war. They makes no bones about hiding among women and children, cheer the launching of their own rockets, and screaming outrage at the response.

The civilian casualties results are deplorable, but as I see Lebanese women and children dying I do not see innocents. I see an implausibly profound ignorance of the situation, likely coercion as human shields, some misguided sense of loyalty to a cause -- in short, the results of calm calculated plays for world opinion at Lebanese expense. If Israel cedes occupation, Hezbollah will fill it back up. Lebanon bloody will pay for their transgressions. That mindless resolve is so clearly rooted in hatred for Israel, I can only regret the loss of Lebanese people who valued life over ideology but were not allowed a choice.

I'm not sure what Israel is supposed to do. Follow our example? I believe they do. We've thumbed our nose at world opinion when it suited us. The difference, of course, is we've persuaded our populance of the threat to our safety to such a degree that half our people still believe what the whole world knows was a pure fabrication -- still no evidence of WMDs.