This week I have three very different subjects on my mind.

The first is one reason that Israeli military activity in Gaza inevitably comes home to roost on the United States. The second is the not-atypical, regrettable action that outgoing President George W. Bush took against President-elect Barack Obama in refusing to let him move early into the government's Washington guest house. The third is the passing last week of heroic South African anti-apartheid fighter Helen Suzman.

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I tend to cast the logic of Palestinians, other Arabs, many other foreigners and some Americans in holding the United States in part responsible for the hideous pounding that Israel is administering to the 1.5 million people of the Gaza Strip in the context of the United States' having been virtually inert over the past eight years in seeking a Middle East peace agreement.

But the argument remains that the Bush administration has been the most sympathetic to Israel since the nation won its independence in 1948. All parties to the conflict, starting with Israel, should have taken advantage of that fact to arrive at a settlement, fortified by the confidence that the Israeli government could have in the fundamental fidelity of the Bush government. Instead, the Israelis didn't seek such an agreement and Mr. Bush was content to sit on his hands and let the opportunity pass.

That's bad enough. What has everyone specifically down on the United States as Israel pounds the Palestinians in Gaza is the fact that the weapons bombing the Palestinians are, for the most part, American F-16s and other ordnance, provided to Israel as part of America's annual $3 billion in aid. The attacks amount to American-made planes dropping American-made bombs. As casualties in Gaza rise into the hundreds, the matter becomes increasingly up close and personal for the Palestinians. Those who don't hate us already certainly begin to after they lose a father, mother or child.

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President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle moved to Washington from Chicago over the weekend to enable their daughters, Malia and Sasha, to begin classes Monday with the other students at their new school, Sidwell Friends.

Mr. Bush was under no obligation to make Blair House, the official government guest house across the street from the White House, available to the Obama family. And he didn't, until Jan. 15, with his staff citing other events scheduled at Blair House in the interim. Mr. Obama didn't complain and moved his family into the nearby Hay-Adams Hotel, not exactly an inn with a manger, in fact, very comfortable lodgings indeed.

On the other hand, Americans have a right to know why Blair House wasn't made available. When we finally find out, the reason had better be good. If it is an event for Texas campaign donors, or for the Bush family's royal Saudi financial friends, it won't sit well.

Mr. Bush probably wasn't expecting to be succeeded by a young family with school-age children. On the other hand, why couldn't he have explained his reasons for refusing to let the Obamas stay in Blair House? Why didn't Mr. Bush's mama just tell him to do the right thing by the Obamas?

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Finally, I want to pay tribute to an extraordinary person who passed away last week: longtime South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman. When I was assigned to the American Embassy in South Africa in 1970, Ms. Suzman was the sole white member of the South African parliament representing what was then known as the Progressive Party, the "Progs." There were no black members of parliament. Blacks, a majority of the population, couldn't hold national office and couldn't vote in national elections.

It is hard to describe the political heat that her unique status put on Ms. Suzman, who was extremely effective in using the protection of her MP status to try to steer South Africa away from apartheid and toward justice. She was the one who asked the questions that the white South African government had to answer about political prisoners, abuses of human rights and the well-being of people in detention, such as Nelson Mandela, whom she visited regularly on Robben Island, along with other political prisoners.

Ms. Suzman was called a communist. She was reviled by other white South Africans for her Jewish faith. She received countless threats on her life. There wasn't any point in trying to talk with her on the phone about sensitive matters: If your phone wasn't bugged by the South African government, hers was.

My job in the political section of the American Embassy at that time was to report on the anti-apartheid opposition. Ms. Suzman came to my house in Cape Town. Even though I was a very junior officer she knew what my assignment was and what I thought about apartheid and U.S. policy toward South Africa at the time. This was during the Nixon administration and most white South Africans were trying hard to convince America that they were a bulwark against communism at the tip of Africa, in the process trying to sign us on to their effort to hold onto power as a repressive racist minority in South Africa.

Ms. Suzman was warm, elegant, well-spoken and intellectual. She also was all guts, a veteran of Johannesburg urban politics and not in the least afraid of the ruling party's thugs.

She and her side won out in 1994 when the African majority achieved power. After Nelson Mandela, from my perspective Helen Suzman did more than any other South African to bring about that outcome.