The notion of blaming Jews for their own deaths has a long and foul history — as long a history as the antisemitism of which it is a traditional part.

The murder of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee last Friday was just that: acts of murder. The murderers have no excuse, no justification, no explanation for their actions.

They are terrorists for whom the only good Jew is a dead Jew. Since the murders, there has been an orgy of entirely spurious attempts at placing the terrorists’ actions in so-called context, as if the fact that the family lived in a settlement provided some sort of validation for the murders, or even a rationale.

The airwaves and media have been full of such arguments, effectively blaming the victims of terrorism for their own deaths because of disagreements over settlement policy.

But whether you agree or disagree with the settlements, this is the morality of hell, in which murder is excused because of a political dispute. The settlements are not the issue here — as the recent terrorist attack in Tel Aviv shows, leading to the death of an Italian tourist, Alessandro Parini.

To those who murdered him and the killers of Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, the issue is the very existence of Israel and the presence of Jews.

Failure to understand this means a failure to understand even the most basic point about the security issues facing Israel every day.