TEL AVIV - The first time I visited Israel was in 1975. The Jewish state, then half its current age, had the feel of a feisty frontier society. I was only seven -- but I still remember my parents dragging me from kibbutz to kibbutz to observe weather-beaten Zionists harvesting oranges and pomegranates. Soldiers were everywhere. Only two years before, Arab armies had attacked Israel on Yom Kippur.

Yesterday's suicide bombing of a Rishon Letzion pool hall reminded Israelis the Arabs still wish them dead. Yet, in other ways, much has changed. Troops and tanks are still a common sight. Thanks to prosperity and yuppification, however, Tel Aviv and the coastal plain have become blandly Western. On my block there are two homeopathic pharmacies. Tiny tots carry cell phones. To buy a decent house costs half a million dollars.

Israelis have become Westernized ideologically too. Like their counterparts in North America and Europe, many of the Jewish state's top intellectuals bash their own society and whitewash those it supposedly "oppresses." Post-Zionist academic theories, Israel's answer to the "post-colonial" studies taught in the West, have become popular.

If only the Palestinians had a leader who knew how to exploit the Israelis' Western-style knack for self-flagellation, they might have their own country by now. Israel seized the strategically crucial Golan Heights and West Bank not because it sought to "colonize" them, pace Edward Said, but because it needed protection from tens of millions of hostile Arabs. Thirty-five years later, those Arabs are no less hostile, yet pseudo-colonialist guilt among Israel's intelligentsia spurs some leaders to trade land for a false peace.

This explains why Ehud Barak offered Arafat a peace plan so generous it threatened Israel's security; and why many Israelis subsequently pressured Barak to sweeten the deal after Arafat rejected it without making a counter-offer. In the long run, time is on the Palestinian side. As Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag show us, the richer and freer nations get, the more self-loathing their intellectuals become; and the more willing they are to reinvent enemies as victims.

The original intifada, which began in 1987, bolstered the Palestinian cause by packaging the Arab-Israeli conflict as a colonial morality play. When Palestinian kids threw stones at Israeli soldiers, it reminded the French of Algeria, the British of India, and the Jews of themselves. But Arafat gambled away his advantage by moving from stones to bombs. Palestinian tactics have become so brutal they have overwhelmed most Israelis' post-colonial sympathies.

Thoughtful Palestinians lament this fact. Last week, a delegation of prominent Canadian lawyers met Sari Nusseibeh, the head of Al-Quds University and the man who organized that first, successful intifada. "The only way to end the occupation and achieve peace is to understand Israeli public opinion," he reportedly told them. "It's opinion that drives Sharon's policies. Palestinians have to stop turning opinion against themselves."

Everywhere I look in Israel, I find confirmation of Nusseibeh's analysis. Even among supporters of the hard-left Meretz, which describes itself as a "peace-seeking party in which Arabs and Jews work together," support for Sharon's invasion of the West Bank ran at about 60%.

"I am definitely not a Sharon supporter," Yair Bortinger, a 26-year-old Tel Aviv University student and Meretz activist, told me. Like most of his friends, he endorsed Oslo and opposes Jewish settlements in the West Bank. "I believe Israel will get stronger if it retreats to its [pre-1967] borders. Then we would have the legitimacy to defend ourselves. When you control other people with occupation, you lose that legitimacy."

But Bortinger had an ideological crisis when a bomber killed 29 Jews celebrating Passover in March.

"At that moment, we just wanted revenge. I'm conflicted about the whole thing. I still don't agree with the invasion in principle. But at least the government [was] protecting us."

The real question is why Arafat ignored Nusseibeh's advice. Even Arafat's enemies describe the Palestinian leader as savvy. Why did he continue to promote attacks against Israel even after Sharon's election victory made it clear violent tactics were turning Israel's Bortingers against peace -- and thereby lessening Arafat's chance of getting his state?

The answer is that Arafat doesn't really want a Palestinian state any more -- unless he can get one without making compromises. And the only way that will happen is through an all-out regional war that results in Israel's destruction. This explains why Arafat's cronies were so anxious to hype the faux-massacre in Jenin as a pan-Arab causus belli.

Bortinger and millions of left-leaning Israelis like him once thought the peace process could be reignited once the current spasm of violence ends. But senseless massacres such as yesterday's -- coupled with the disclosure of documents linking Arafat to the murderers who perpetrated them -- changed that. Two years ago, the Israeli left explained away terrorism as an organic product of colonial-style occupation. Now, few do. They know that an independent Palestinian state would likely become a base for terrorist attacks on pre-1967 Israel, as well as an advance base for foreign Arab armies.

"Post-Zionism," in other words, is taking a backseat to realism in Israel. And for anyone who cares about the survival of the Jewish state, that can only be good news.