No fancy set-up, no clever intro – let’s jump right in the deep end of the latest Nicolas Kristof column.

Beyond the daily heartbreak of the Middle East is a larger tragedy in international relations, the boomerang syndrome.

Does Aussie Tim Blair know about this? I bet he could work up some cute local angle to this whole wacky terror thing.

It is the impatient young Palestinians who in effect turned Ariel Sharon into the prime minister of Israel. And with each additional suicide bombing, they increase the prospect that Mr. Sharon will be succeeded by the only person who could make him look like a pacifist wimp: Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kristof finally says something not nice to the killers of women and children – they got his favorite wide-eyed dove kicked out of office. Apparently, all these suicide bombers are just protesting the results of the last Israeli election. It’s kind of like Michael Moore and the Florida recount, only Moore is more likely to implode under his own weight.

The Palestinians have even made respectable in Israel the hard-line view (supported by 46 percent in a recent poll) that Palestinians should be kicked out of the West Bank — a sort of ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land.

I came to that same conclusion last week, Nick. I don’t like it, but unlike you, I don’t get paid to air my wet dreams in public.

Yet the same boomerang effect applies to Mr. Sharon's policies as well. Each time he bulldozes more Arab homes, each time he kills Palestinians and their hopes, he creates more terrorists.

Kristof forgets that the Palestinians were offered 93% of everything they wanted, including the Israelis giving up some of their settlements – and rejected it because they think they can get 100% through terror bombings. But I will give Nicky credit for good writing. That last pair of sentences may be the most succinct summary of Blame the Victim that I’ve ever read.

It was telling that when Mr. Sharon blocked Yasir Arafat from going to Beirut for the Arab summit meeting last week, Mr. Arafat's role was filled by Farouk Kaddoumi, a hard-liner who took the opportunity to meet with the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

Naughty dictator-type woopty-woops met in a shattered city and said mean things about Jews? Say it isn’t so!

In theory it would be hard to imagine a worse Palestinian leader than Mr. Arafat. But the Palestinians could manage that.

Well, they could manage it, but only if those nasty Jews forced them into it.

Still, the symmetry goes only so far. In the end, Palestinian terrorism may be succeeding in some twisted, shortsighted way, while Mr. Sharon's incursions into the occupied territories are probably doomed to failure.

Killing women and children? Effective, but tragically shortsighted. Going after the barbarians? Futile. Did Nick give a second thought to that graf? A first thought?

One of the lessons of recent history seems to be that brutality rarely works for a government, especially a democratic one like Israel's, while terrorism often works just fine for insurgents. In Algeria, for example, both the French and the Algerians employed terror; the result was a catastrophe for the French and victory for the Algerians. Likewise, in Colombia in recent years, terror has arguably been successful for guerrillas but a failure for the government.

The French quit Algeria. The Colombians left a swath of their own territory. So instead I’d argue that Paris and Bogotá weren’t brutal enough. But that requires one of those tricky second thoughts that New York Times columnists are paid to avoid like OJ avoids introspection.

Among Palestinians today, the terror attacks are perceived as successful, and Mr. Sharon has turned Mr. Arafat into a Palestinian hero in a way he never could have himself.

Kristof fails again to use his rational faculty. Ask yourself: What kind of culture takes a man who has brought them increasing poverty and failure, has used the tactics of a madman to do so, and is now cowering by candlelight in a boarded up room and shitting in a bucket (for all I know) – what kind of culture makes this man a hero?

I’m asking you to ask yourself because Kristof never asked himself. All cultures are equal, you know. Except for the really, really nasty ones – they're more equal than others.

In contrast, for Mr. Sharon, tanks seem to work no better in the West Bank than they did in Lebanon. Putting aside the debate about the ethics of Israeli policy in the territories, as a practical matter, from Israel's own standpoint, Mr. Sharon's policy so far has been worse than ineffective; it is aggravating the terrorism.

If you’ll look at this map, you’ll see that the invasion was a success. International pressure forced Israel to withdraw, not Arab prowess or PLO terror.

And in that last phrase, Kristof again blames the victim for getting blown up at dinner.

While Mr. Sharon talks about removing the "infrastructure" of terrorism, the real infrastructure is simply the rage and frustration of ordinary Palestinians. Many of the suicide bombs are made of sugar and fertilizer and cost less than $150 to produce. In such circumstances, a Syria or an Iraq is ruthless enough that it can squash unrest by exterminating everything that moves, but a democratic and more squeamish Israel cannot.

Well, rage, sure -- and a shitload of Semtex, an education system geared to producing killers, mothers who urge their sons to suicide, the cult of failure, PA sponsorship, weapons from Iran, moral support from left-liberals, and the brutal corruption of the leadership.

But, yeah, the rage bit is all Israel’s fault.

Then Nick conveniently forgets to ask how much longer Israel will remain squeamish. It’s difficult to get nauseated over what happens to the enemy when you’ve already thrown up after seeing your daughter’s lungs on a wall.

The Israeli press is becoming increasingly critical of Mr. Sharon's adventure and has noted that the prime minister seems to have a habit of getting into messes without working out how to extricate himself. He pushed into Lebanon in 1982 in response to provocations and terrorism. The result was that Israel found itself stuck in an unpopular, failed low-level war for 18 years. Once again, where is Mr. Sharon's exit strategy?

Exit strategy? EXIT STRATEGY? The only exit strategy possible to Israel is to book six million one-way El Al flights to Miami.

Avraham Burg, speaker of the Knesset, was quoted as saying in Haaretz: "Just because the position of the Palestinians is a stupid one, just because they cannot overcome terrorism and they fled the peace process in a violent manner, does that require us to enter this insane cycle?"

Yes, yes it does. The other option is the death of too many Israeli civilians, or the death of Israel herself.

The answer is no. Let's hope that Mr. Sharon realizes this soon, because the air will be thick for years with returning boomerangs.

Yes, I was being facetious when I said “deep end.”