Simple, but Fundamental, Morality

The discussion of Didi Remez' allegations about Silwan and Israel's media rumbles on, over at his blog. Along the way one Michael LeFavour penned a fine comment on morality, focusing on the pervasive idea that Israel, or America, or the rich West, somehow make folks so mad they've got no alternative but to commit murder. You'd think arguments such as Michael's would be unnecessary - had you been on Mars the past 30-40 years.

[T]here is nothing that an enemy of mine could ever do to me that would cause me to shoot a 70 year old cripple to death, roll his wheel chair to the edge of a ship, and dump his lifeless body into the ocean. There is nothing that an enemy of mine could ever do to me that could allow me to take his child from him, execute him in front of her, then crush her skull with my rifle and saunter past her mangled corpse with a sense of accomplishment lightening my stride. There is nothing that an enemy of mine could ever do to me that would fill me with so much rage that I could shoot the tires out of a family sedan, stroll up to it, place the barrel of my weapon against the swollen womb of an expectant mother and pull the trigger three times to make sure the family’s first boy would die first, then proceed to execute, at point blank range, her four screaming children huddled together in a final embrace, the oldest not even a teenager at the ripe old age of eleven.
No, sir, there is nothing my enemy could do to me and there is no hate I can imagine harboring that would drive me to do those sorts of things or the hundreds of other similar things your Arab friends have done to Israeli Jews over the course of this conflict. In fact it is precisely my morality that brings me here, it is precisely my morality that drives my pen to criticize, and it is precisely my morality that motivates me to oppose the moral perverts that side with, further the cause of, or advance the goals of a craven peoples that honor, congratulate, idolize, and revere the child martyr, the suicide belt, the death squad killers, and the bloody handed mass murderer.

Thanks, Michael, for the clear reminder.