(July 18) Everything you wanted to know about the current political situation:

1. Early in the Palestinian war against Israel (also known as the intifada), critics of Israel often pointed out that the Palestinian casualty rate was much higher, as if this showed who was the bad guy in the situation. Now, however, the ratio has fallen to 2 to 1, with a much higher proportion of Israelis being killed.

This is, of course, the result of Israeli restraint. Sacrificing more people, however, has not been tallied to Israel's favor in international opinion.

2. Speaking of casualty figures, since suicide bombers and gunmen who try to murder Israelis are tallied among the Palestinian dead, these people too become counted as victims of Israel.

3. The UN demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon. But once Israel withdrew - as the UN recognized - it did not then condemn Lebanon for failing to secure the border. On the contrary, now UNIFIL forces are being reduced and their commanders openly declare that protecting the border is not their job. They merely "monitor" the situation. Clearly, the UN's "peacekeeping" mission applies to all situations except when Israel is being attacked, even after Israel fulfills all the UN's requirements.

4. The US constantly tries to be evenhanded in evaluating the violence. Each act of Palestinian terrorism is balanced by a mention of some Israeli misdeed. This does not necessarily apply, however, when Israel does something. Last week, when Israel bulldozed several Palestinian homes that had been used for sniping and grenade attacks, the State Department condemned the action as "provocative." There was no mention that civilian homes being used for military attacks might be contributing to the current problem.

5. There is a difference between "evenhandedness" and fairness. Fair means judging based on the facts and trying not to give one side any special margin. It still means, however, that one can determine who is right.

For example, courts are supposed to be fair, but judges constantly rule that some are guilty and some not guilty.

Evenhandedness is a mathematical balance, no matter how far one has to stretch or exaggerate to find equivalence.

It is fair to say that Japan launched an unprovoked sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It is evenhanded to say the US was equally at fault for placing sanctions on Japan because of its previous aggression in Asia.

6. The real test of who is responsible for the violence is simple: If the Palestinians stopped attacking Israel, the fighting and killing would stop immediately. If Israel took no military action whatsoever the attacks against its people would continue, even intensify.

Who, then, is responsible for the violence?

7. When Palestinian or Lebanese groups try to kill Israeli civilians they are called "guerrillas" and not terrorists, while when Israel tries to target specifically those responsible for carrying out terrorist attacks in order to avoid civilian casualties to the greatest possible extent, this is denounced and called "assassinations."

8. When other countries use overwhelming force in their defense this is approved, but when Israel does so it is called "excessive force" and denounced internationally, even if it involves substituting airplanes for helicopter gunships on a single day.

9. It is ridiculous to say that the crisis is caused by settlements, since Israel has offered to remove most of the settlements.

10. It is ridiculous to say that the crisis is caused by occupation, since Israel has offered to end the occupation.

11. It is ridiculous to call this the Aksa Intifada since Israel has offered to give the Palestinians control over the mosque.

12. It is amazing to realize that people throughout Europe and elsewhere really think Israel wants to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza, when it would be delighted to get rid of virtually all this territory in exchange for a real, secure and stable peace.

13. Virtually every Palestinian killed in the intifada has died on land Israel would have already given up had the proposals of Prime Minister Ehud Barak or President Bill Clinton been accepted by the Palestinian leadership.

14. It is remarkable how the Western media repeatedly reports on a Palestinian "right of return" without noting that this alleged right is based on a nonbinding, one-time, narrowly defined UN General Ass.embly resolution intended to give instructions to a long-dead effort to mediate the dispute.

(Nor does anyone ask why, if the resolution is so sacred, don't the Palestinians accept that same resolution's demand - given equal weight in the text - that Jerusalem and Bethlehem be put under UN rule?)

15. The Syrians and Palestinians both rejected Israeli offers to give them the overwhelming majority of their demands, and instead resorted to violence. Are there, perhaps, some lessons to be learned from this fact? Might we draw some conclusion from the fact that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon had no effect on Hizbullah's use of terrorism against Israel?

Is the real issue not "withdrawal" or "decolonization" or Palestinian rights, perhaps, but an effort to destroy Israel?

More food for thought:

- Isn't it reasonable to say that Israel is more eager than the Palestinian leadership to have an independent Palestinian state?

- How can the world expect Israel to make more concessions when the concessions it does make are so widely ignored by the West and taken as signals by the Arab world to demand still more?

- How can certain European countries and US leaders reject their responsibility to Israel as an ally when Israel's current problems spring largely from many years of following US advice - whose acceptance was often demanded?

In this context, why should Israel ever heed them again?

- Doesn't the fact that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has shown such remarkable restraint mean European media and Western intellectuals should reevaluate their knee-jerk labeling of him as a hawk and warmonger?

- Why is it that certain elements in the Western media - the BBC and CNN come to mind - no longer feel the need to even cover themselves with a pretense of fairness?

- Is there any limit to the number of outrageous statements Yasser Arafat and his colleagues can make before Western leaders and journalists conclude that they have no credibility, and so inform their constituents and readers?

- Why are so many Western Jewish intellectuals and activists passionately indignant over once-accepted claims that Jews murdered God, sought to seize world power, poisoned wells, ate Christian children and controlled communism or capitalism, but perfectly ready to swallow and spread the equivalent contemporary slanders about (Israeli) Jews?

Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that we aren't seeing all these points made every day in Western newspapers, TV programs, and, most importantly, the statements of all democratic leaders.