Life & Mortality Quote by George Carey

Carey’s line is built like a moral airlock: you can enter the conversation, but you can’t bring certain excuses with you. As a clergyman, he’s not primarily adjudicating policy; he’s policing the ethical grammar of the debate. The opening clause grants Israeli suffering first, a deliberate ordering that signals empathy before argument. It’s also a preemptive rebuttal to a familiar rhetorical move in conflict talk: leapfrogging straight to Palestinian grievance and letting that grievance do the work of absolution.

The phrase “we must” lands as pastoral authority, but it’s also a subtle attempt to create a community of the decent - a collective “we” that includes listeners who may disagree on borders, settlements, or statehood, yet can still be recruited into a shared baseline: suicide bombing is beyond the pale. That baseline matters because public discourse on Israel/Palestine often turns into a competition of wounds, where acknowledging one side is treated as betrayal of the other. Carey refuses the zero-sum script while still drawing a hard line.

The key word is “justifies.” He doesn’t deny the “plight of the Palestinians”; he refuses to let it function as a moral solvent. That’s classic clerical triage: recognize suffering, name sin, forbid rationalization. The subtext is aimed at Western audiences tempted to confuse explanation with exoneration - and at activists whose outrage can slide into a permissive ethic. In a polarized arena, this is less a comment than an intervention: a demand that compassion not be weaponized into permission.