Then let me disappoint him with a moderate reaction from an Arab American. What Muhammad Zaoul did was wrong. I cannot defend it and I won't, but I can understand it for what it was, an act of self-destructive desperation by one of my compatriots. Do not the Jews take their children to visit Masada? Do they not admire Hana who sacrificed her seven sons? Do they not rejoice at the slaughter of innocent Egyptian children in their Passover? Were those not all acts of self-destructive desparation by an oppressed people? Please don't try to tell me it was an Angel of Death that slayed the first born, or I will answer with enough angels of my own!

What we need to create are the conditions (economic, military, political, diplomatic) that will make those acts of desperation less likely. I am not claiming that all violence will disappear, but I am claiming that when such conditions are in place, then voices of compromise, moderation, and nonviolence will sound a whole lot more appealing than they do right now. The first thing that needs to be done is for the Israelis to stop taking Palestinian land, whether they do it by settlements, by expulsions, by creating restricted military zones, by limiting the right to acquire property to Jews only, or by building a wall through Arab lands. After that we can talk.