GRADING ON A CURVE: Nicholas Kristof's column in today's NY Times noted that the Arab world applies a double standard to Israel:
[W]hile the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories is real, it is small potatoes by Arab standards.
Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing.
Likewise, Syria blithely killed about 20,000 people in crushing an abortive uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. And Saddam Hussein, who has killed more Arabs than Ariel Sharon and all his Israeli predecessors put together, is somehow a hero for much of the Arab world.

As Andrew Sullivan points out, Kristof ignores the elephant in the room:
If you're a raving anti-semitic paranoiac, defeat at the hands of the Americans is one thing; but defeat at the hands of the Jews is beyond endurance. This is the pathology without which nothing that is now happening in the Arab world can be understood.
Kristof's column has a number of interesting points. Most notably, in describing the rage of the "Arab street" at Israel, he asserts that "there is a tendency among Israel's supporters to assume that the rage must be feigned, but that's a fantasy."
Kristof is attacking a straw-man. I don't think many supporters of Israel assert that the masses are somehow faking rage. Rather, those of us who would have the U.S. and Israel do things which may further inflame that rage are making two different arguments:
1) While real, the rage of the "Arab street" is partly created by and largely stoked by the Arab governments themselves, especially including the "moderate" regimes. Accordingly, those regimes do not deserve protection from the consequences of their policies of incitement, and the U.S. and Israel should not be dissuaded from doing the right thing because of the risks which such governments have brought upon themselves.
2) While real, the consequences of the rage of the "Arab street" will not harm the strategic interests of the U.S. as much as the State Department and media feel; either (a) the danger of "moderate" governments being overthrown is overstated by those corrupt leaders with an incentive to exxagerate the danger (and who in any case have little sense for public opinion in their countries) or (b) even if overthrown, the results to U.S. interests will not be as detrimental as commonly assumed.
Either point is debatable, but Kristof does not engage them.