Jorn Barger’s provocative post on his Robot Wisdom weblog — he headlined a link to an article claiming that assassinating unarmed Palestinian freedom fighters is official Israeli government policy “Is Judaism simply a religion of lawless racists?” — has been roundly condemned in a discussion forum he set up for responses. The consensus seems to be that Barger had blurred the distinctions between Zionism and Judaism, between Israel and Jews, and was doing the kind of generalizing and stereotyping we associate with bigotry. By and large, the responses were civil despite the posters’ perception that Barger had been way out of line, and by and large they have commented on their surprise at how uncharacteristic they considered this of Barger, as well-respected and widely-read as his weblog is. But Barger has pushed the issue further by asking, “Are Jews incapable of polite discourse?”

In separate incidents today, the son of rabid anti-Arab Jewish leader Meir Kahane — himself assassinated a decade ago — and his wife were ambushed and killed in the West Bank by Palestininan gunmen; and a Fatah official was shot dead leaving his West Bank home in what Palestinian officials described as an assassination. Israel claimed he had been killed in firefight between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli security forces. Draw your own conclusions about the continuing cycle of violence and murder.