The draft text would have called on Israel "to refrain from excessive use of force" and on the Palestinian Authority to "take a clear public stance against violence."

"The draft text that was negotiated was not fair and balanced and consistent with our long-standing policy. We are not prepared to support a text that distorts the reality in the region," US Ambassador John Bolton told reporters after council consultations on the issue. "We did reject it."

"A lot of changes were made but the balance of the text was still not adequate in our view. We think it was disproportionately critical of Israel and unfairly so and needlessly so," he added.

Palestinian UN representative Ryad Mansour, who had pushed for council action, said the council's 14 other members had shown "a tremendous amount of understanding and flexibility."

"But unfortunately one member (the United States) is shielding and protecting Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and other parts of the occupied territory," he added

Mansour said that at the initiative of the nonaligned movement, the Arab UN group, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and others, the Security Council would hold an open session on the Middle East Monday.

"We will see representatives who will speak on behalf of maybe more than 150 countries to express their outrage at Israeli aggression and attacks and request upholding of international law," he added.

Bolton said he did not think that Monday's meeting would be "productive."

"I don't think the Security Council is an exercise in group therapy," he noted.

The countermeasure is, then, actually physical - a fact confirmed by Defense Update, which explains the system has "an automatic reload mechanism to handle multiple attacks", although that's about as specific as it gets.

The sceptical among you should note that Trophy has allegedly completed "hundreds of live tests with the Israel Defense Forces and demonstrated effective neutralisation of anti-tank rockets and guided missiles, high safety levels, insignificant residual penetration, and minimal collateral damage".

Trophy is claimed to be effective against several simultaneous threats from different directions, whether the protected vehicle is stationary or moving, and in all weathers. According to Fox, Trophy will soon get a chance to strut its stuff in Iraq.

Having swept the Islamic militant group into power in parliamentary elections in January, partly in the hope that living conditions would improve, some Palestinians are asking if it was worth it.

"People ask about prices and then leave. Only a few are buying," said fruit seller Munir al-Rifi.

"Nobody has received his salary and employees are in debt. If this situation continues, chaos will spread."

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh earlier this month said the new administration, which took office on March 29, was broke. Officials have said they do not know when March salaries for 140,000 government staff will be paid.

The finance minister on Thursday warned of economic collapse within months.

On top of that, internal violence has worsened. Israeli aircraft and artillery have been pounding sites in northern Gaza to stop militants from firing rockets into the Jewish state.

But what hurts many Gazans most is their empty pockets.

Taxis cruising Gaza's streets are empty. Shops and restaurants say business is down.

Supermarket owner Anwar Abu Al-Kass said his revenue had shrunk by half, with government workers buying only basic food and cigarettes -- which they could not pay for in hard cash on the spot anyway.

"I have no idea how long this will go on for but I am too embarrassed to refuse them credit," Abu Al-Kass said.

"If salaries are not paid there will a big crisis and the government could collapse."

Gaza economist Omar Shaban said things would get worse.

"Chaos will be the natural result," he told Reuters.

Senior Hamas leaders say they are doing everything they can. On Friday, Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar travels to Middle Eastern countries to try to drum up aid.

The United States and the European Union have cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority, although Washington has promised more humanitarian aid.

Israel and the United States have called on other nations to boycott Hamas until it disarms and recognizes the Jewish state. Hamas, whose charter commits it to destroying Israel, has refused.

DEFIANCE

Defiance by Hamas does not change economic reality for Gaza's 1.4 million people. Unemployment hovers at nearly 50 percent and Palestinians live on an average $2 a day.

Ordinary Palestinians had mixed reactions when asked if Hamas should bow to international demands to reform and recognize Israel.

"I support the government negotiating with Israel to get us out of this crisis. We have always depended on Israel in terms of work and goods," said vegetable seller Omran Al-Rahel.

House painter Abu Ahmad laid blame with Hamas's predecessors. "The bad situation resulted from the previous corrupt government," he said.

Few expect Hamas to move aside.

"This government has only one choice and that is to succeed. Whoever bets the government will collapse is a loser," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

The situation could "explode" unless international pressure eased, he added.

For government worker Hamdi Rajab, compromise was about what to buy at the vegetable stand. He chose the cheapest items.

"We even have to make concessions over what we eat," the father of five said.

However both Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinski and Major General Yitzhak Harel said they had no illusions that such incursions would stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into the Jewish state.

In the past week, 18 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes and tank shelling designed to halt repeated salvoes of makeshift missiles fired by hardline factions such as Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

The violence has been the worst since the new Palestinian government led by Hamas, which has refused to renounce violence or recognise Israel, was sworn in last month.

"I do not rule out ground operations if requested by the southern command of Israel. If the time comes, we will launch them," Kaplinski was quoted as saying by the top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

He admitted, however, that frequent incursions into autonomous Palestinian areas in Gaza before Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers last summer, failed to stop rocket attacks.

He did not deny that the army had extended a unilaterally imposed interdiction zone in the northern Gaza Strip, expanding the area subjected to repeated bombardment to barely 100 metres (yards) from the nearest homes.

Aid organisations and human rights groups, Israeli as well as Palestinian, have accused the military of bombarding civilian targets in the Gaza Strip.

Two of the 18 Palestinians killed since last Friday were young children. Fifteen of them were deemed to be militants.

Kaplinski said Israeli military pressure on the Palestinians was "beginning to bear fruit" but said "more should be done to stop rocket attacks".

In an interview published in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, Harel said Israel could be on the verge of a large-scale ground operation in Gaza unless the rocket attacks cease.

"We will continue escalating our actions... and it is possible that eventually we will launch a ground operation in Gaza," he was quoted as saying.

"We may even be on the verge of a large-scale ground operation in Gaza Strip and the West Bank," he said, albeit recognising that rocket attacks continued when Israeli troops occupied the territory in the past.

Since Israel left Gaza, its military activities have been limited to air strikes, naval bombardment and cross-border artillery firing.

The army again pounded the territory Friday after two rockets were fired into Israel the previous day causing no damage or casualties, a spokesman said.

The newspaper interviews came after Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip Thursday for the first time since last summer's pullout.

An Israeli military source said a small force entered a short distance through the Kissufim border gates in a "pinpointed" operation to search for explosives left by two militants who were killed late Wednesday.

The two Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militants had apparently been trying to infiltrate Israel and carry out an attack over the Jewish Passover holiday.

A UN Security Council statement that would have urged Israel to refrain from "excessive use of force" against the Palestinians was blocked by the United States late Thursday, on the grounds that the text was "not fair and balanced".

Under negotiation for the past three days by the 15-member council, the text had sought to respond to Israel's recent intensive bombardment of Gaza.

Eitan, a former agent of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence agency, in the 1980s headed the anti-terrorist branch of the service that handled Pollard.

Pollard, an American Jew and former analyst for the navy, gave thousands of secret documents about US spy activities in the Arab world to Israel between May 1984 and his arrest in November 1985.

Just before his arrest, Pollard had tried to seek refuge at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Today, the 79-year-old Eitan leads the Pensioners' Party which won seven seats in Israel's March 28 parliamentary election and is set to become a partner in Olmert's incoming coalition government.

Pollard has also threatened to appeal to Israel's Supreme Court to prevent Eitan from being nominated a minister under Olmert, calling such an appointment an "infamy and disgrace" for the Jewish state, according to the leaked letter.

Eitan still faces an outstanding Federal Bureau of Investigation arrest warrant for his role as Pollard's handler, making him potentially the first member of an Israeli government sought by US justice.

Last July, a US appeals court refused to reduce the life sentence against Pollard, whose conviction and imprisonment sparked a crisis in relations between Washington and its key Middle East ally.

Successive Israeli governments have asked for Pollard to be freed. He was granted Israeli nationality while in prison in 1998.

US security services say his release would be an intelligence threat.

Many who went on the media attack did more than imply. On April 3, for instance, the same day that the Philadelphia Inquirer reprinted Boot's piece from the L.A. Times, a notably similar op-ed appeared in the Boston Herald under the headline "Anti-Semitic Paranoia at Harvard."

And so it goes in the national media echo chamber. When a Johns Hopkins University professor weighed in last week on the op-ed page of the Washington Post, the headline was blunt: "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic." The piece flatly called the Mearsheimer-Walt essay "kooky academic work" -- and "anti-Semitic."

But nothing in the essay is anti-Semitic.

Some of the analysis from Mearsheimer and Walt is arguable. A number of major factors affect Uncle Sam's Middle East policies in addition to pro-Israel pressures. But no one can credibly deny that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, where politicians know that they can criticize Israel only at their political peril.

Overall, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay makes many solid points about destructive aspects of U.S. support for the Israeli government. Their assessments deserve serious consideration.

For several decades, to the present moment, Israel's treatment of Palestinian people has amounted to methodical and despicable violations of human rights. Yet criticism of those policies from anyone (including American Jews such as myself) routinely results in accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry.

The U.S. media reaction to the essay by professors Mearsheimer and Walt provides just another bit of evidence that they were absolutely correct when they wrote: "Anyone who criticizes Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle Eastern policy -- an influence AIPAC celebrates -- stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby.' In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a very effective tactic: anti-Semitism is something no one wants to be accused of."

Sadly, few media outlets in the United States are willing to confront this "very effective tactic." Yet it must be challenged. As the London-based Financial Times editorialized on the first day of this month: "Moral blackmail -- the fear that any criticism of Israeli policy and U.S. support for it will lead to charges of anti-Semitism -- is a powerful disincentive to publish dissenting views. It is also leading to the silencing of policy debate on American university campuses, partly as the result of targeted campaigns against the dissenters."

The Financial Times editorial noted: "Reflexes that ordinarily spring automatically to the defense of open debate and free enquiry shut down -- at least among much of America's political elite -- once the subject turns to Israel, and above all the pro-Israel lobby's role in shaping U.S. foreign policy."

The U.S. government's policies toward Israel should be considered on their merits. As it happens, that's one of the many valid points made by Mearsheimer and Walt in their much-vilified essay: "Open debate will expose the limits of the strategic and moral case for one-sided U.S. support and could move the U.S. to a position more consistent with its own national interest, with the interests of the other states in the region, and with Israel's long-term interests as well."

But without open debate, no significant change in those policies can happen. That inertia -- stultifying the blood of the body politic by constricting the flow of information and ideas -- is antithetical to the kind of democratic discourse that we deserve.

Few other American academics have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of professional risks that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt took by releasing their provocative paper. And few other American activists have been willing to expose themselves to the kind of risks that Rachel Corrie took when she sat between a Palestinian home and a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza three years ago.

The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish the home, rolled over Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same U.S. media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

In sharp contrast to the high-tech killers who run the Israeli military apparatus and the low-tech killers who engage in suicide bombings, Rachel Corrie put her beliefs into practice with militant nonviolence instead of carnage. She exemplified the best of the human spirit in action; she was killed with an American-brand bulldozer in the service of a U.S.-backed government.

As her parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, said in a statement on her birthday a few weeks after she died: "Rachel wanted to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, a people she felt were largely invisible to most Americans."

In the United States, the nonstop pro-Israel media siege aims to keep them scarcely visible.

On March 30, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a higher education reform bill that for the first time would establish an independent advisory board to make recommendations "that will reflect diverse perspectives and a wide range of views on world regions, foreign language, international affairs, and international business."

At issue is "Title VI," the section of the Education Act passed in the 1950s that established federal funding for universities. The intent was to nurture international studies and create a cadre of Americans who would guide the United States through the thicket of foreign relations.

Longstanding complaints from the Jewish community that many college faculties nurture hostility to Israel instead of scholarship were reinforced after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A number of academics argued that anti-Israel monomania in Middle East departments helped blind the U.S. policy establishment to the emerging Islamist threat.

Those arguments have resonated in a Washington obsessed with pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

"The events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, have underscored the need for the nation to strengthen and enhance American knowledge of international relations, world regions, and foreign languages," says the House bill passed last month.

The bill also grants the education secretary some discretion in examining whether Middle East Studies departments are producing well-rounded graduates for the U.S. diplomatic, intelligence and defense corps, as envisioned by the Title VI framers.

A JTA investigative series last year found that several of the Middle East Studies centers with anti-Israel and anti-Western agendas have extended their biases even beyond the college campus, delving into public education and developing curricula for middle- and high-school students.

The House bill requires the secretary to take into account when allocating funds "the degree to which activities of centers, programs, and fellowships at institutions of higher education address national interests, generate and disseminate information, and foster debate on international issues from diverse perspectives."

A Senate bill passed last year grants the secretary the same discretion, but the Senate balked at the seven-person advisory body that was included in the House bill. Some senators feared the board invoked unsavory memories of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, the controversial government committee that investigated suspected Communists during the McCarthy era.

However, both the House and Senate bills guarantee that "nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize the International Advisory Board to mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education's specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction or instructor."

That language has gone some way to assuaging fears in Congress and universities that the advisory board would be coercive.

The House bill was brought to the Senate floor last week; it remains to be seen whether the advisory board will survive efforts to resolve the two competing bills. The American Jewish Congress, which led lobbying for the advisory board, blitzed Congress members in the days before its passage.

Another battlefront for Jewish groups seeking reforms on campus has been the Civil Rights Commission.

The commission is stacked with members sympathetic to the views of the administration in power. It has no enforcement power, but its recommendations are taken seriously by the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.

Meeting last Monday, the commission voted to:

- Recommend that the Civil Rights Office use Civil Rights Act enforcements, which include funding cuts at universities where Jewish students face a hostile environment;

- Call on university leaders to denounce anti-Semitism;

- Call on universities to "maintain academic standards" and "respect intellectual diversity" in language reminiscent of the House and Senate bills;

- Recommend that the Civil Rights Office inform Jewish students of their rights; and

- Call on Congress to collect data on anti-Semitic and other hate crimes on campuses.

The commission endorsed the recommendations by a 5-1 vote, with one commissioner absent. The commissioner who voted against, Gerald Reynolds, who is the chairman, was unable to shake his concern that a blanket recommendation against anti-Semitism could inhibit Christian proselytizing, a practice he did not endorse but which he believed had constitutional protection.

Perhaps as significant as the recommendations were the commission's findings, which discerned anti-Semitism in "anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda."

That recognition was crucial for the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, one of the groups that had petitioned the civil rights commission.

"Going to college should involve learning, not getting threatened or being called a Nazi," the institute's founder, Gary Tobin, said in a statement, referring to propaganda comparing Israel to Hitler's Germany.

Susan Tuchman, director of the Zionist Organization of America's Center for Law and Justice, which also petitioned the commission, welcomed the call for university administrators to unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism.

"Many universities have remained silent. That connotes acceptance," she said.

Other petitioners included the AJCongress, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel and the American Jewish Committee.