Earlier this week, the NYT ran a front-page article with the following headline:
"Israelis Worry about Terror, by Jews against Palestinians."
The article cited the concerns of the Israelis about the likelihood of Jewish terrorism, and the steps taken to prevent it.
Avraham Bronstein of the great Protocols blog had the reaction that I figured many pro-Israel types would: “another example of moral equivalence.” In this case, though, he and they were wrong, for the following reasons:
1) The article put the concerns in the proper context:

...Israel has not confronted a Jewish militant group of any size for nearly 20 years.
...One of the few points of agreement is that attacks by Israeli civilians against Palestinians are rare. According to B'Tselem, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the last three years. At the same time, 328 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians inside Israel, and 190 more in the West Bank and Gaza.

2) Yes, Jewish terrorism is vastly less prevalent, less encouraged by the larger society, and more punished after the fact than the Palestinian variety. As such, it is less representative of Israeli society than its Palestinian counterpart. But the events themselves, and the perpetrators thereof, are no less evil. And there is no reason for the media not to pay due attention to such evil where it exists. Jewish-based suggestions to the contrary are, in my opinion, merely based on the all-too-common impulse to cover up bad news.
3) Most importantly, the headline itself was, in its own way, publicity that Israel should have paid for in its struggle against Palestinian terrorism:
"Israelis Worry about Terror, by Jews against Palestinians."
Israel is worried about the prospect of Jewish terrorism, and is trying to prevent it (even arresting the father of a murdered baby).
The same day this headline appeared, the Palestinians showed that they were not nearly as worried about terrorism, nor were they making such efforts to prevent it - in fact, they celebrated it.

I’d previously written that the “road map” process seemed perfectly designed to repeat every mistake made during the Oslo process and reject every lesson to be learned from such mistakes. Others made similar arguments, most notably Charles Krauthammer.
I had also thought that terrorists might attack hotels in the U.S. where Jews were celebrating Passover. I was wrong. I prefer being wrong about things like that.
This attack was a very big deal. The Passover Massacre, aside from culminating a massive terror onslaught in the spring of 2002, was perfectly calibrated to push the most sensitive buttons of the Israeli populace. By massacring a group of Holocaust survivors celebrating the formative experience of the Jewish people (literally, per the book of Exodus), the Hamas terrorists made it clear that their war was one of extermination rather than for territorial gain. As the Israeli papers quoted from the Haggada in the wake of the attack: “In every generation, they rise up to destroy us.”
This attack was similarly calibrated: a massacre of children who had just departed the holiest site in Judaism that Jews can visit (I’m not going to get into the Temple Mount issue now).
I think it is only a matter of time before another massive assault on the terrorists begins. Hopefully, Arafat’s deportation or death will be part of it. (Some Israelis think that Powell’s request for Arafat’s help was to help prepare the diplomatic ground for such a step. Let’s hope.)