A friend of mine just sent me this with the following preface:

David Applebaum was a close friend of my wife and officiated in March at our wedding. Last night, he and his daughter Nava, who was to be married today, were murdered in the second terror attack of the day in Israel.

I don't believe any lives are inherently worth more than other lives, but I do believe a culture that glorifies suicide in conjunction with the mass murder of civilians is twisted to the point of evil. I don't believe all Palestinians condone, let alone glorify, the "martyrdom" of suicide bombers, but enough do that they continue apace and are accepted as a legitimate tactic. The fatalistic worship of death always yields just that.

The War on Terror just became very real again for me today:

The team of the emergency room at Shaare Zedek Medical Center was already used to many terror attacks, but Tuesday night's suicide bombing at Cafe Hillel on Emek Refaim Street brought a new, horrific experience.

As the hospital's doctors and nurses waited to treat the wounded, they received word that the attack had killed the head of their emergency room, Dr. David Appelbaum.

Appelbaum, 50, had taken his daughter, Nava, 20, to the cafe on the eve of her wedding, which was to have taken place Wednesday night. Both were among the seven Israelis killed in the suicide bombing. Both were lain to rest in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Colleagues said Applebaum, who moved to Israel from Cleveland, Ohio, some 20 years ago, had in the past often been among the first to reach and treat victims of terror attacks.

"He would appear at the site of every attack, volunteer, get in the ambulances to evacuate the injured to the emergency room," said Dr. Kobi Assaf, director of the emergency room at Hadassah Ein Karem hospital, also in Jerusalem. [Haaretz]

I do not rejoice at the targeted deaths of Hamas leaders in Israel's retributional campaign, and I especially regret when innocents - including women and children - are harmed and killed in the strikes, but I also know that "targeted" is far more moral than untargeted self-annihilation with the sole purpose of destroying the lives of as many fellow human beings as possible. And I know that, now, finally, Arafat must go, alive or dead.