It happened when Israel responded to last March's Passover Massacre. Their action was swift and mighty. Their troops entered most West Bank towns and set out to find and arrest the terrorists and their leaders.

When they met with resistance, Israeli troops were ready to shoot it out. When they uncovered the bomb factories, they destroyed them.

This didn't happen overnight. It took many weeks. But the operation was just days old when President Bush started calling for Israel to withdraw from the towns. Even though he had originally stated that Israel had the right to defend itself against terrorists, he soon changed his tune to, "Enough is enough." Israel and the Sharon government basically ignored Bush's demands at that time, and kept up their fight. After accomplishing most of what they needed to do, they started to withdraw from the West Bank towns.

There remained, however, two hot spots. One was in Bethlehem, where the Israelis had scores of Palestinians holed up inside the Church of the Nativity. Those inside refusing to give up included terrorists, some on Israel's most-wanted list. In order to end the standoff, the United States helped broker a deal that allowed some of those terrorists to escape to other countries, or to Gaza. Some deal!

The other standoff was taking place at the Ramallah headquarters of Yasser Arafat. In fact, the first move by Israel after the Passover Massacre was to enter and surround Arafat's compound.

During the entire episode, Israel claimed that there were several most-wanted terrorist leaders being granted refuge by Arafat inside the compound. We were even able to see some of them each time the Palestinian leader did an interview for television.

In the end, as part of a deal brokered by the U.S., some of the most wanted were taken to Palestinian jails. None were handed over to the Israelis. Some deal!

That was then, and this is now.

During the nearly six months that have elapsed since the Passover Massacre, Israel has done a masterful job of weeding out the terrorists, their leaders and their ability to make bombs. In fact, things were going so well that prior to last week's two homicide bombings on successive days, it had been some six weeks since the last one had gone off.

Even so, Israel had no intention of letting these acts of terror go unpunished. So they once again entered Arafat's compound in Ramallah, where the mother of all terrorists has remained for the last six months or so.

That was the middle of last week. Over the weekend Israeli troops knocked down all of the buildings in the compound except for the one that Arafat calls home these days. But Arafat isn't alone inside the remaining building. The Israelis claim that there are some 200 people, including 20 or so wanted terrorists, inside with him.

The Israelis want those 20 to come out with their hands up, and Arafat says it will never happen. So guess what? It's the United States to the rescue once again, and once again President Bush is telling Israel to back off.

On Monday, White House spokesman Ari Fleisher said that the president considered Israel's destruction of Arafat's headquarters to be "unhelpful to the cause of bringing about reform in Palestinian institutions." He also called on Palestinians to stop their homicide attacks.

On Tuesday, Bush himself said, "As we fight terror, particularly in the Middle East, they've got to build the institutions necessary for a Palestinian state" to emerge. "It's not helpful, what happened recently. ... I thought the actions the Israelis took were not helpful."

To make matters worse, on Tuesday the United States failed to veto a United Nations resolution calling for an end to the siege of Arafat's headquarters. Instead, the U.S. abstained. We probably would have voted for it, but while it condemned suicide bombings, it failed to specifically condemn Palestinian terror groups.

Although this standoff is still not over, the fact that the United States and President Bush himself would take such a stand is deplorable.

This is not about Yasser Arafat at all. It's about Israel continuing to round up the terrorists and their leaders. It's about protecting civilian life. It's about ending terrorism.

Hey, that sounds a lot like what we are fighting for in our war against terror.

What President Bush should have said was: "We call on Yasser Arafat to release the men wanted by Israel. If not, we understand that Israel has the right of self defense, and we would expect that they will have to enter the building and get the men themselves. We, the United States, would do, and will do the same in our fight versus terror, should we face a similar situation."

Let Israel finish the job!

Steve Malzberg's WABC Radio shows can be heard live on the Internet at www.wabcradio.com: Monday-Friday, 6-8 p.m. Eastern time, with Richard Bey on "The Buzz" and Sunday mornings from 9-11 a.m.

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Editor's note:
You can fight terrorism: David Horowitz’s Defense of Israel Campaign