Sometimes, Violence Really Is the Answer

Would any reasonable nation faced with comparable threats of annihilation have acted differently?

But suicide bombings in the cities stopped. And this is what is so frustrating about being a liberal in that neighborhood. We hate that this is happening to Palestinian families, but what are our options? What are we supposed to do? The violence had to stop.

But instead of responding to Muslim violence by cracking down on its perpetrators, the British punished its victims by giving the mufti exactly what he was seeking: a reduction in Jewish immigration and a statement by the British high commissioner that the Balfour Declaration was a “colossal blunder.”

This failure to understand—or worse, to understand but not to acknowledge—the fundamental difference between deliberately targeting civilians and accidentally killing civilians in the course of self-defense reflects moral obtuseness at best and outright bigotry at worst.