THE VIOLENCE OF TERRORISM

Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist, was executed yesterday.

Incensed at his government, he decided to strike against innocent civilians. His actions were cold-blooded and calculated.

While American sentiment remains mixed about the death penalty in general, support of his execution was overwhelming. On the semissourian.com Web site, 80 percent of respondents said justice demanded his death.

This column is not about Timothy McVeigh. It is about terrorism.

Thankfully, McVeigh is the exception that underlines how blessed Americans are in our homeland. When we gather at work or play, we do not fear that we will be targets of political fanatics seeking to make a statement with our blood and mangled limbs.

Such is not the case everywhere in the world.

In the Middle East, terrorism climbs anew, infecting the daily life of regular people with fear, anxiety and tragedy.

Last month, two 14-year-old Israeli boys were on a hike by themselves. Their bodies were found torn to pieces in a cave with political messages written with their blood on the rock walls.

Last week, 20 Israeli teen-agers and young people were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber struck outside a disco. The bomber had placed nails and screws within the explosives to cause debilitating injury to as many innocent people as possible.

The escalating violence has forced President Bush to become more directly involved in Middle East peace negotiations. He recently dispatched a special envoy to the region

Heightening the tension is the fatigue and anger of the Israeli people. Public opinion there is demanding the government take broader action to strike back against the foreign bases of the terrorists which threatens to expand instability.

A few weeks ago, Palestinian terrorists fired mortars from civilian neighborhoods into Israel. Israeli tanks struck back, and a Palestinian baby was killed in the crossfire. The death became a further rallying cry for more terrorism, although it was the terrorists themselves who endangered the child by using a neighborhood as their base.

The growing pressure by the Israeli population is based in part on previously failed negotiations. The preceding Israeli government made extensive concessions to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat responded by heightening his cloaked support for violence and celebrating those who killed Israelis as religious heroes.

With the release of the movie "Pearl Harbor," some Speak Out callers have voiced anger that the Japanese continued to negotiate for peace while planning and launching attack. To these callers, the duplicity itself seemed to carry a moral offense almost as grave as the attack.

In the Middle East, Arafat has been waging war while negotiating for peace as a regular means of strategy for decades. Duplicitously, he petitions for a cease-fire while encouraging his supporters to bomb away. To the West he disavows the atrocities as uncontrollable, the result of extremists. To his own people he celebrates the carnage, memorializes the killers and brainwashes the children.

The death penalty is not universally supported in the United States. Many people believe all killing is wrong. But even opponents recognize there is a moral difference between targeting innocent people as a matter of policy -- killing and maiming civilians and fighting to defend life and home.

In the next several months, the likelihood of broader violence in the Middle East is increasing. The United States will be a powerful player in the negotiations to avert the worst. But let us realize that there is no moral equivalency between the terrorism of Yasser Arafat and the forced responses of the Israeli government. If violence against terrorists and those who empower them is necessary to stop violence against innocent civilians, so be it.

Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist, was executed Monday. No terrorist, anywhere in the world, should ever feel safe that his fate will not be the same.

Jon K. Rust is co-president of Rust Communications.