Mom, the Palestinians are looking at me funny!

Israel continues with its policy of assassinating suspected Palestinian terrorists. 'Anticipatory self-defense,' they call it. Doesn't self-defense imply that you are under some sort of actual threat, not that you might, at some point, perhaps, fear for your well-being? If I decide the guy who's walking up the street might in the future decide to rob or rape me, I can't just fire a gun in his general direction, no matter what kind of funny looks he might be giving me. If I did and used this sort of defense I'd probably get laughed at. Yet the Israeli attacks seem to elicit nothing more than a disapproving frown and a shake of the head from the U.S—not even when these attacks also take the lives of bystanders. Israel continues to expand its settlements and bulldoze the homes of
Palestinians (who are, make no mistake, a people under harsh colonization and occupation—you’d be angry too under those circumstances), even in areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian control. And when they ask for neutral observers to be sent in, Israel calls it 'one-sided,' and the U.S. wields its veto power in the U.N. about and refuses to go along with it. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

(Please note that I am not saying that it's acceptable to blow yourself up in a restaurant full of people, but the idea of 'anticipatory self-defense' is absolutely ludicrous to me.)