Back when I was writing a column for the Kansas City Star, I got a call from a woman who had a story idea for me: A widow had buried the ashes of her late husband — an avid golfer — by his favorite hole on a local country club course. The woman thought the story had humorous possibilities. Desperate for something to write about, I took the bait. I called the son of the widow and in describing my plan, I became vaguely aware of what a pointless and un-amusing story I was pursuing. At some point, the son interrupted me and gently said, “George, surely you have something better to write about.”

Someone should have said the same thing to the composer of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” an opera currently being performed at New York’s Metropolitan, based on the murder of an elderly disabled man in a wheelchair by Palestinian terrorists. If ever there was a story that had no virtue as material for art, this was it. The performance of the opera has inspired protests and charges of anti-Semitism. Defenders have accused critics of willfully misinterpreting the work. They have evoked freedom of speech and justified the opera because it helps us “understand the anger, frustration and grievances of other people.”

But “The Death of Klinghhofer” offers no lessons or “eternal verities” other than that some people are capable of committing despicable deeds. Klinghoffer was a non-entity. He had no connection to the plight of the Palestinian people other than the fact that he was Jewish. And his murderers had no credentials as representatives of Palestinian grievances.

What they did wasn’t even tragic. It was meaningless, nihilistic. If all that art can do is to embody meaninglessness, then we have no need for art. Nor does it matter if the opera is “beautiful” — or anti-Israel. The opera merely represents an error of aesthetic and moral judgment, a poor choice of an event through which to explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Klinghoffer had been a gentile and his killers a bunch of drunken soccer fans, the event would have been filed under “Senseless Crimes,” and forgotten.

The composer has claimed that his opera helps explain how “the mythology” that the terrorists grew up with “forced them or dared them to take his action.” According to one critic, “Klinghoffer” is about “the depths of historical resentment and how it drives people to commit heinous acts.” This is genteel sophistry, the fabrication of another myth — that the terrorists were “forced,” and “driven,” that they had no choice, that they were agents of necessity. Calling the opera the “death” rather than the “murder” of Klinghoffer makes it sound impersonal, as if the man died of natural causes.

Terrorism is never justifiable. Acquiescence in and rationalization of terrorism reveal the depths of moral vacuity. And terrorism will continue to bedevil us until we have the courage to say, “No more.”