TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Jacob Sullum
Even the libertarian gets it:
In a country where most people serve in the army at some point, the line between legitimate military targets and innocent civilians can be thin. If these young women -- one 18, the other 20 -- had been eating pastry in street clothes, would their deaths be more troubling?
The Palestinians, in any event, do not worry about such distinctions. From their perspective, to judge by the spontaneous jubilation that greets every terrorist outrage, soldiers and civilians, men and women, adults and babies, are all the same, whether they're in Hebron or in Tel Aviv -- as long as they're Jewish.
They don't even have to be Israeli. Seventeen years ago, PLO men killed an American Jew in a wheelchair on the Achille Lauro and dumped him overboard. Today, they're happy to kill American Jews who commit the offense of studying or vacationing in Israel.
In short, this is exactly the sort of implacable, unreasoning, ruthless hatred upon which President Bush declared war after Sept. 11. Now he is urging the Israelis to make peace with it. (Jacob Sullum, Mar. 15)
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