When the cause itself is bloodshed, one cannot excuse the outbursts of bloodshed as anomalies.

As I’ve explained my general rule in the past, “My own long-standing view on political violence is that we should not blame people who have political opinions, even very floridly expressed, when someone who shares those views goes off the deep end and chooses violence. I blame people only when they openly call forth mobs to seek personal conflict with their political enemies.”

The fact is, just about any important cause — whether it is a good cause or a terrible one — is capable of inspiring some people to violence. Expecting people in political debate to tone things down out of fear that somebody on their own side might take things a bit too literally is unrealistic.

But there’s one glaring exception to that rule: the Palestinian cause. That’s because the cause itself is violence, and like the radical Islamist project more generally (of which it is a component), it manifests itself in violence that is both organized internationally and recurrent worldwide, such that even “lone wolf” nutjobs are doing more than overreacting to “globalize the intifada” rhetoric; they are imitating the central modus operandi of the movement.

Put another way: The violence is not incidental to the rhetoric; the rhetoric is incidental to the violence. Sunday’s attack in Boulder is only the latest example, following the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home and the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.

Even to describe it as “the Palestinian cause” is misleading. While appeals to Western leftists (and, increasingly, to muddle-headed isolationists on the right) may emphasize the notion that the Palestinian people deserve a homeland, the real energy and activity has always been about eliminating the Jewish homeland and restoring the entirety of the Levant to Muslim rule. That this would require the annihilation of the Jewish population of Israel is a feature, not a bug. It has been proven over and over that this objective cannot be squared with the tactics of normal politics, and that its proponents do not desire to use the tools of normal politics. When the cause itself is bloodshed, one cannot excuse the outbursts of bloodshed as anomalies.