For every outrage on one side there is a story of outrage on the other. Our atonement was not an attempt to claim that Israel holds all the responsibility.
Palestinian violence is both immoral and irrational.
To me, Israeli deaths are a personal tragedy. The way we talk that discounts the huge amount of Palestinians killed and wounded reinforces the desperation that led to the current tragic moment. The reality is quite different. Since taking office, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has expanded existing settlements, built new roads into the West Bank and made it clear at Camp David that he would insist on keeping the vast majority of settlers in place. The state Palestinians would then be offered would have within it a group of Israeli nationalistic fanatics, many of whom moved to the West Bank precisely to ensure that there would never be a Palestinian state.