Today’s New York Times features an editorial that makes my blood boil. I’m not sure what’s worse about this piece: its internal inconsistency, or its application of a moral equivalence between Israel’s defensive operations against Hamas and Palestinian acts of terror against Israeli civilians. Either way, it merits breaking down:

There are a few certainties when it comes to the Middle East. One is that Hamas militants will do anything to sabotage Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

So far, so good. It’s very true: Hamas will do anything to sabotage peace efforts. It’s their standard operating procedure: every time progress seems to be within reach, Hamas steps up the violence. This is because Hamas is, and always has been, steadfastly against a two-state solution to the conflict. That is, Hamas’s stated goal is to drive all the Jews into the sea, to “liberate all of hisoric Palestine”, to have just one state, and no Jews. An independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is not enough for Hamas. They want Tel Aviv, too.

Another is that Israel will retaliate against serious assaults on its people.

Translation: Israel’s defense of its citizens is an obstacle to peace. Fuck you very much. Let’s be very clear: the highest purpose of a government is to protect its civilian population from harm.

And a third is that without measurable improvements in the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, a few spectacular acts of terrorism can derail even the best-intentioned peace talks.

Are they seriously saying that with measurable improvements in the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, a few spectacular acts of terrorism would no longer act to derail peace talks? This is pretty hard to swallow, even when you ignore the glorification of terrorism implied by the choice of the word “spectacular” (as opposed to, say, “heinous”).

It’s hard to imagine what particular improvements in the lives of Israelis would allow Israelis to shrug off brutal murders like those in Jerusalem earlier this week. What the Times doesn’t seem to realize is that the only “meaningful improvement” Israel really wants is the cessation of these acts of terrorism. Cure the disease, not the symptoms.

On the Palestinian side of the coin, the Times’ statement makes even less sense. Palestinians don’t need improvements in their lives in order to accept terrorism: witness the celebrations in Gaza when news spread the innocent civilians were gunned down in cold blood.

Perhaps the Times is saying that improvements in the Palestinians’ lives would stop these acts of terror from happening in the first place. This is a popular concept - that terror stems from poor living conditions. It is also, however, a very foolish concept, one the Times’ editorial staff itself must not really believe — because, as they themselves wrote earlier, the terrorists “will do anything to sabotage” peace. Hamas and its leaders don’t care about improvements in their daily lives, things that normal, decent people want, like good schools and affordable, high-quality health care; they only want to see the Jews dead and gone.

If there is any hope of salvaging the effort, the United States, Europe and Arab states must move quickly to arrange a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and give serious thought to a new strategy for dealing with Gaza.

Translation: even though Hamas will do anything to sabotage the peace process, Israel should directly engage Hamas in the peace process.

This begs the question: why talk peace with someone when it’s already acknowledged that this someone has no intention of ever making peace, under any circumstances?

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