There have been scenes of shocking barbarity. On the eve of Rosh Hashana, a Muslim throng on the Temple Mount plaza hurled stones and bricks on worshippers at the Western Wall below. In Nablus, Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching and smashing the ancient shrine in a frenzy of desecration. When three Israeli reservists took a wrong turn into Ramallah, two of them were lynched, their corpses mutilated beyond recognition, thrown from a second-story window, then dragged through the streets. The third, it was reported, was burned in his car.
Israeli officials keep pleading for a halt to the fighting.
But rather than quell the violence, the Palestinian Authority has done its best to inflame it. Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Jefferson and his colleagues did not urge Americans to massacre civilians or destroy places of worship. Nor did their children's schools and textbooks promote blind hatred of all Englishmen, or depict Great Britain as a fascist horror that God wanted them to destroy. America's revolutionary Patriots did not celebrate terrorists and suicide bombers.