The horror of death and destruction of innocents in New York and Washington, the launching of an indefinite 'war against terrorism', the harassment and worse of those seen as Muslims and Arabs in America, the opportunistic attempts to equate the September disaster with Israeli experience of terror (but not with that of the Palestinians) or alternatively to divert attention altogether from Israel's brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by denying it has any connection, the absence of a real debate in our democracy. How to think about such matters?