One of the things that was so hard to bear in the Middle East was the fact that Israel declared, in effect, that the children of the Palestinians were worth nothing. And the Palestinians were, in effect, saying the same thing in their attacks on children. There’s some deep despair about the future when one is willing to kill children too; it is as though there doesn’t need to be any future. Who cares about the future? I don’t know a more irreligious attitude, one more utterly bankrupt of any human content, than one which permits children to be destroyed[.…]

And yet, of course, the acts of terrorism and reprisal are very different. This is something that is seldom considered. The technology on the Israeli side is an extension of American technology and is used no differently than the Americans used it in Vietnam. This is what is called “clean killing.” It’s killing which is laundered. Neither the people who commit the killing nor the people at home ever see the dead and wounded. The killing is rendered abstract; the sin is an abstract sin. There’s no crime imputable. But, on the other hand, there is a great outcry when Palestinians strike in Israel because the blood is visible-the bodies of the children are visible to all. A double standard is always exercised when the technological world meets the world of immediate violence.