I suppose someone could say that this is none of our business, that if the Arabs want to live in states that kill people for unpopular opinions, that is their business. But I am dubious about that. The mindset that drives such actions is the same mindset that drives Muslims to attack us and try to destroy Israel, because it offends their monstrously puffed-up vanity that Muslims do not rule the world, and that Jews rule a few square miles out of the tens of thousands of square miles that Arab countries rule. I suspect that either we catalyze modernizatin of thought and political culture in Muslim lands or one day the jihadists will spark off a hideous bloodbath of a war between Muslims and the West. Most of the blood will be Muslim.

This is, of course, a rhetorical question. It is, of course, not at all in accord with modernity or Western ethics, nor should we be surprised that it is not. It is the action of a distinctly non-Western, non-modern society that is, in many ways, the antithesis of everything Western civilization stands for. Pretending that they are “just like us” is ridiculous… and so is being astonished at outrages like this.

i don’t get it either. i mean, last i checked, the Palestinians *have no oil*.