So says the Bush administration.
The White House strongly condemned the attack. "It is a despicable act of terror for which there is no excuse or justification," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
But today's terrorist attack in Tel Aviv (9 dead, 68 wounded so far) wasn't unexpected. Between the Passover holiday and the opening of the 17th Knesset, Israel has been on high terror alert for about a week now. Meanwhile, security is now even tighter, more roadblocks have been set up, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway was closed for hours and Arab security prisoners in Israel are celebrating.
But that's not all. According to Reuters, no less,
Palestinian militants linked to President Mahmoud Abbas's increasingly fractured Fatah movement threatened on Monday to attack Jews overseas to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners from its jails.
Two other main Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also said they supported violence to free more than 8,000 prisoners held by the Jewish state, but neither explicitly backed attacks on Jews outside Israel.
Neither, of course, did they explicitly oppose such attacks. And please tell me again about how this is anti-Zionism, not antisemitism.
The Bush administration condemns suicide bombings in Israel in the strongest possible terms, and PM Ehud Olmert says that he "will know how to respond, what to do." But what will be the response other than continuing to do exactly what was done before the attack? What will anyone do? What would it take for there to be a substantive response?
The fact is that these mass murders have no consequences for their perpetrators, other than a few hours of righteous indignation expressed, almost by rote, by many of the leaders of the civilized world. And when these attacks spread (as they will, as we have been promised, as they already have) to Jews abroad, what will the leaders of their host countries do? And what can they be expected to do?
