It wasn't even an Arab bus. It was a regular ol' Israeli bus, just like the ones that have been blown up in the past. It was in a "Druze" neighborhood of a northern Israeli Arab town at the time of the shooting. I don't know if there's any point in even trying to make sense of it, but it's hard even if you try.

In most areas of Israel, Druze are pro-Israel and even serve in the army. Moreover, there's no way to know who is on that bus at any given time, even if you've decided who you want you targets to be.

This is just indiscriminate killing - terrorism, pure and simple. I imagine it is not sponsored by any paramilitary group or anything, just the act of a lone terrorist.

The shooter was an army deserter, however, who apparently went AWOL as a protest against the Gaza pullout. The article also says that military resources had been diverted to the south to handle anti-pullout protests. So we're sure to see blame put on the anti-pullout side of things.
 

I'd like to be among the first thousand Jews to say that (1) this guy (the gunman) is an evil murderer (2) I don't mind he's dead and (3) There's no political cause that would justify what he did.

Things are just getting uglier and more tense. I've been nervous about this for months, and we've been posting about our anxieties for that long. It looks like for the next month I have to hide under my desk and avoid the news at all costs. So long.
 

What an idiot. Whom did he think he was helping?!
 

This kind of thing was bound to happen- Hell, I want to shoot up a busload of A-rabs fifteen times a day- but I'm with the Bean on this one- it makes my skin crawl when this happens- by anyone.
 

The more that ball-and-chain found out about what happened, the more horrified and confused we became.

This evil evil man murdered Israeli citizens, not Palestinians. Moreover, they were Arabs, but they weren't Muslim; they were Druze which are usually very pro-Israel and serve in the most elite IDF units. Now, even murdering random Palestinians would have been wrong, but this was wrong and nonsensical.

Here's an analogy that my wife and I came up with. Both she and I are very concerned about illegal immigration. We'd like the borders more secure. Say someone with the same concerns went to a day-laborer site and shot a bunch of Mexican laborers who were in the country illegally. That would be a horrible crime, and we would want the person tried and executed (or killed by a mob). But that's not the analogy to what this guy did. The analogy to what this guy did would be to be very concerned about illegal immigration and to go to Koreatown and shoot a bunch of Koreans who were naturalized American citizens. That's like wrong squared. It doesn't even have anything to do with his agenda.

Finally, the more we think about it, the happier we are the mob killed him. He deserved the death penalty, which Israel basically doesn't have, and we are now spared the grueling ugliness of a public trial.
 

Everybody seems quick to label this guy as a terrorist, and if he was, then death is too good for him. But it sounds like we don't have all the information yet. From what I've ready, he just sounds like someone who went nuts, like that guy who drove into LAX a few years back. Muslims went out of their way to say he wasn't a terrorist, just a guy who snapped. We know that terrorists are very methodical and rational, in their own twisted ways. We should make sure we have all the facts before we rush to exhibit some kind of moral equivalence here.
 

Au contraire, mon frere. This is exactly the place for moral equivalence. The moral equivalence is in targeting innocent civilians.

And for the record, the guy at LAX was not just a guy who went nuts. He wasn't looking to just shoot anyone, or to shoot up an airport (he passed at least one other airport on his way to LAX) or to shoot up just any place at an airport. He went the El Al counter for a reason. That takes planning, not snapping.

If you mean it wasn't state-sponsored terrorism, I think we can all agree on that, however (in both cases).
 

I call him a terrorist. You don't have to be sponsored by anyone or anything to qualify.
 

Fortunately, he wasn't a very good terrorist, otherwise it would have been much worse. It's clear that he was acting alone, which is a relief to know.