Get Ready To Feel Like Palestinians

We're all collateral damage in waiting.

Photo: the Yassin Mosque after it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike on the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on 9 October 2023 (Associated Press)

Let’s imagine that you publicly say Ted Bundy killing people was wrong, and that we should prevent such horrible things from happening again. This seems like a pretty straightforward moral principle.

But then for some reason you are immediately harassed by a flood of people who insist that you must therefore totally support and even adore Jeffrey Dahmer killing people. “Why do you love cannibalism so much?” they sneer, “You’re worse than both of them!” Your position is that murder is wrong, and potentially avoidable, and you’re choked with empathy for innocent victims. Their position, based on the virtual nothing they know about you personally and a number of tribal prejudices they brought to your comment in the first place, is that very obviously you must love and cheerlead for other murders, and that’s the only possible reason that you me…