Begging the collective pardon, but this could be the most appalling thing not involving murder that I’ve seen all year. Don’t get me wrong, gents, a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, and if you like these offered up here on their own merits then, by all means, marinate in your enthusiasm.

As for myself, I recall the windowless side of a building in Westwood, Los Angeles, which in the wake of 9/11 was adorned with a vast, head-to-toe mural. A sort of American Lara Croft, bedecked in commando gear, gleamed from gunmuzzle and lipgloss and cheekbone alike; screaming eagles — I forget if these painted into the sky were birds or planes — strafed the background, which was ablaze with flames and, I remember, with the flag of the US of A.

This fetishized IDF killer patriot sexpot business is of the same lurid genre, taken to a whole ‘nother level. I can’t think of anything more rancid and hopeless than packing off a nation’s ripe girlhood on the hard pretense of kickass service to one’s country. Or wait — yes I can: celebrating fotos of said ripe girlhood in the final stage of some fleeting innocence. The fantasy of the hot broad who slaughters the would-be pillaging rapists is a bit more than I can bear, particularly when there is a real war taking place that involves actual carnage.

Under such circumstances sex and violence, trading places when respectively latent and blatant, take on an altogether morbid feel, as inappropriate to a civilized country fighting back terror as it is for allies behind the lines to get kicks off the vicarious thrill of manufactured erotic tension under the least beautiful of conditions.

Right?

* Note: if these pics are photoshopped, this post is (only partially) null and void.