It can't harm the dead. Diverted to a living person, it might actually do harm. In praise of philistines It is said that man doesn't live by bread alone. Sometimes this is unfortunate, because people who cannot live by bread alone too often kill other people in consequence of the fights they get into. It may not be presumed that the Philistine people of the Bible had this property any more than anyone else.
Philistines do less harm than most ideologically motivated people.
Speciesism, I calls it. If it doesn't work right, we can always try something else. Once a person has killed other people on behalf of an ideology, he becomes rather devoted to it. 1997 Proposals to forbid golf courses have about the same motivations as proposals to forbid skate boarding, although the rationalizations are different. Asking a critic to name his favorite book is like asking a butcher to name his favorite pig.