Responding to this week’s murder of nine people by a Palestinian suicide bomber, Hamas spokesman Khaled Abu Helal had this to say: “We think that this operation…is a direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people.”

Let us, for a moment, take Mr. Abu Helal at his word, and imagine that the bombing was a “direct result” of Israel’s policies and not a cynically orchestrated operation planned by a network of terrorist handlers associated with Islamic Jihad. Let’s imagine that young Palestinians have no choice but to murder civilians in cold blood, or are driven to acts of desperation because they see no other future for themselves or their people.

In other words, let’s imagine we are among the apologists who take out full-page ads in major newspapers or publish “academic” papers placing the blame for the region’s strife squarely in the laps of the Israelis. Let’s imagine we are the scores of campus “activists” who have prejudged the situation in the Middle East and apply tired “apartheid” analogies to a situation that is infinitely more complex.

Of course, for our imaginations to take full wing, we would have to ignore the nuttier, and bloodier, parts of the Hamas charter that call for Israel’s destruction and posit a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. We would also have to turn a blind eye to the fact that Hamas does not even pretend to talk of coexistence in the region, or that Israel has been rebuffed in the past in its efforts to create a negotiating process that would lead to a Palestinian state.

No, the more you try to get into the heads of Hamas and its apologists, the more difficult it becomes. A movement based on excusing the most brutal acts of murder can only lead to more of the same. If those Palestinian kids have no future, the blame rests with the Palestinian leaders, and their supporters, who have lacked the humanity to imagine one for them.

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