William Safire has words of defiance from the world's most despised and embattled leader

This prime minister, after a period of painful forbearance under intolerable provocation, is now decisively fulfilling the mandate Israelis overwhelmingly gave him: to turn back the tide of terror. President Bush is resisting powerful pressure from many in the worldwide opinion mafia and the oil industry to "engage" and undermine him. Though demonized by extremist Arab dictators and despised by fanatics left and right, Arik Sharon is the average Palestinian's last best hope in this generation for a good life in an independent state.

When the usual cowards and the international barbarian cheerleaders try to instill doom in Israel, he barks back:

Sharon is not buying that at all. "I saw that pessimistic evaluation in Newsweek about our morale," he says with some scorn. "I don't even consider that an issue. Through 4000 years of continuity in our ancestral homeland, Israel's people have undergone hardship, persecution, Holocaust, terrible adversity. But the nation is stronger than others have estimated. We have overcome all our challenges. The Jewish people are indestructible."