Evans: There's no room for violence in First Amendment, but…

The events of the past six months in Israel and Gaza have me wishing it were possible to have just one more lunch with a friend who died four years ago.

My friend was Jewish. In today’s vocabulary, he would be called an ardent Zionist. He had little patience for people who disparaged Israel.

But he also was a proponent of dialogue and diplomacy. He never hesitated to call me for lunch after The Des Moines Register’s opinion pages published something he disliked. Our lunchtime conversations and debates were models of civility, even though our discussions often challenged each of us to defend an...