If a person is asked if there is justification for a violent act, and the person has sympathy for the people of whom the perpetrator supposedly acts in support, the one answering may very well say yes.

If the same person is asked whether he or she would commit a violent act, descibed or not, in support of a political cause, the answer could be very different.

I knew a lot of Irish-Americans, including members of my family who had a great deal of sympathy for the IRA. They were descendents of Famine Irish, with a lot of ancestral stories and a lot of residual resentment. Yet I don't know a single person who, at the time or any time since, would ever have killed an Englishman in cold blood or have bombed a department store.

I can't speak for all the Muslims in the United States, but for those I do know, I can say that they are no more of a threat to the communities in which they live than are the Hindus or the Jews who I know. They don't go to church on Sundays, and the women wear things on their heads that most of the community's women don't wear. They go to work, they pay their taxes, their children go to public schools, they hold doors for others, and they vote, or at least they visit the polls on election day.

I understand that many of the Israelis have doubts about their government's actions against their Arab neighbors. Yet, many American Jews support the actions of the Israeli government even when those actions might be considered of dubious ethical value by some of Israel's citizens. If someone asked those Americans whether or not they would kill a person under similar circumstances, without mentioning the word "Israel", I wonder what their answers would be.