Once again, I made the mistake of joining another Cif blog on the conflict that has cursed the land of Canaan. Something that utterly depresses me is how often pro-Palestinian commentators show so little regard for the life of the people they claim to stand for, as when they resort to all sort of intellectual contortions in order to “understand” suicide bombing.
suicide bombing did not suddenly appear out of a vacuum – it is a desperate act – an almost inevitable consequence – of decades of misery, murder, theft and oppression
claimed one poster.
I’m sorry, but I yet have to be convinced of its inevitability. If that was the case, then you would have to explain why other desperate oppressed peoples don’t go for it. The Palestinians themselves didn’t do it when Israel occupied a territory twice as large as Israel itself, and when they were bombing the shit out of Lebanon.
I do recognise that Israeli brutality against the Palestinians is the context in which Palestinian violence operates. But why suicide bombings? There are many other ways to resist oppression which do not use your own people as cannon fodder and are not aimed at targeting civilians.
Suicide bombings have been chosen as a tactic by a bunch of fanatics who’ve convinced their ranks and files they’ll go to Heaven if they do it, but who won’t do it themselves (but for one exception). Those twisted minds deserve only my contempt. Telling your own people to blow themselves up for the cause shows that you don’t care about the lives of your grass roots. As a weapon, it’s useless. It doesn’t undermine your enemy’s military capacities and it’s not very efficient as a demoraliser of your enemy’s civil population.
Some Palestinian leaders encourage it in their bid to appear more radical in their fight, more loyal to the cause and more true to al-Qur’an. It has much more to do with gaining power within the internal Palestinian struggle than with steaming anger off; and it’s been a disaster for the Palestinian camp.
Palestinians fought against the occupation for a long time without resorting to suicide bombings. Then was a time when they wore fatigues and talked about socialism and pan-Arabism. Then, the Berlin Wall came down and the whole conflict was highjacked by idiots on both sides who think their name is Emmanu’el.
