The most effective weapon ever deployed against Israel wasn’t smuggled through a tunnel or fired from Gaza. It was introduced at a press conference, wrapped in diplomatic language, and christened “the cycle of violence”. Nobody starts anything. Nobody chooses anything. Violence, we are told, simply happens.

For decades, the United Nations, foreign governments, NGOs and the professional activist class have responded to Palestinian terrorism with the same weary refrain: both sides must show restraint, both sides must de-escalate, both sides must break the cycle of violence. It sounds wonderfully balanced until one asks a rather impolite question: what exactly is the “other side” of blowing up a bus full of civilians?

During the Second Intifada, more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered and thousands more injured in a relentless campaign of suicide bombings, shootings and terrorist attacks deliberately aimed at cafés, restaurants, buses and shopping malls. It was the murder of ordinary civilians going about ordinary lives.

When Israel responded by pursuing the planners, dismantling terrorist networks and raiding the villages and cities where those responsible operated, civilian casualties sometimes occurred—as they tragically do in urban warfare. Yet almost immediately, the world reached for its favorite euphemism. A suicide bomber walking into a Tel Aviv café and detonating himself........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)