"A reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist who sought to attack innocent Israeli citizens." Parse this phrase and see if you can make a single moral improvement. These are the words of Ariel Sharon denouncing the murder by Eden Natan Zada of four Arab residents (two Christians, two Muslims) from the town of Shfaram. Clear condemnation of the act, vivid identification of the guilty, solidarity with the victims. Israel felt itself shamed; and, nearly 72 hours after Jewish custom would have had Zada's remains interred, his family was still looking for a burial place. Has any Palestinian leader ever uttered such a resonant cleansing of the terrorist from the body politic? Not by a long shot. There was not the echo of an extenuation in Sharon's statement. And it was not just the prime minister or the politicians or the leftists who rained anathema upon the deed. Comparable sentiments of horror came from the society itself. "No cemetery will accept Jewish terrorist's body," proclaimed a headline on the front page of Ha'aretz. The army would not permit the murderer a military funeral, since it would be an offense to the honorable men and women who died in uniform defending their country. In any case, he had been AWOL more time than he had served. The authorities wouldn't allow him to be buried in the West Bank, lest his resting place become a shrine like that of Baruch Goldstein in Hebron. And even Tapuach, the extremist settlement where he lived in hiding among other devotees of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, refused to have his bones among them. Rishon LeTzion, the city where he had been born and raised, made clear from the outset that it would not permit his corpse in its grounds either. Finally, a decision in the prime minister's office obliged the city to cover his remains with its earth and allow an out-of-the-way funeral attended by 100 mourners to be held. Four of them were arrested for incitement...