Exorcism Re: ex-radical

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Fri Feb 7 20:26:37 PST 2003


I was perfectly happy to avoid the Yosh Pit, and thought that the Pit was content to avoid me. But I see the Pit cannot help itself, and has decided to go after me using Doug's post as a springboard. So, allow me to dive in as well.


> Bold and shocking? No way. Rather, it's pathetic and predictable.

Nice opening -- the Pit's come to play.


> Despite the strength of the pro-Zionist ideology in America, I bet
> that the term "homicide bomber" will never catch on enough to replace
> the term "suicide bomber," as the former offends lovers of the
> English language by its redundancy.
>
> Here's my Google test of usage:
>
> "homicide bomber" -- 1,880 entries
> "homicide bombers" -- 4,440 entries
> "suicide bomber" -- 115,000 entries
> "suicide bombers" -- 142,000 entries.

Wow. Suicide beats homicide by a wide margin. Guess it's meaningless. Just look at the numbers!

If you wanna know what I'd call it, I'd use simple terms like "premeditated murder" and "terrorism." But these lack the heat of the suicide/homicide tags, so, given a choice between the two, I'd still go with homicide, simply because that is the intention -- to kill other people. That the bomber kills him- or herself doesn't negate the overall effect. A real "suicide" bomber would kill only him - or herself. That's suicide. Deciding to take others with you, people who have no desire to die at that moment, is homicide.

Put it this way: if, instead of a bomb, a terrorist carrying a hand gun or an automatic rifle got on a commuter bus and shot everyone on board at point blank range, then shot himself, would you call him a "suicide shooter"? Somehow, I think many of you would, especially The Pit, who, as we see below, gets a little excited by the prospect.


> Suicide bombers terrify Israel because it can neither deter nor
> retaliate against them, unlike those who bomb, kill, and intend to
> stay alive. Israel punishes the families of suicide bombers by
> blowing up their houses, etc., but such collective punishment doesn't
> work as deterrent, nor does it extinguish the sense of elemental
> terror and provide the satisfaction of sweet revenge.

"Sweet revenge." Isn't that nice? The Pit must have tingled when typing those words. Forget that the tactic of blowing up busses and seders is extremely self-destructive to the Palestinian cause -- ask Edward Said, for one -- and concentrate instead, as does the Pit, on the "satisfaction" killing Jews brings. A Kahane zealot could do little better when describing the joy of snuffing Arabs.


> Calling them
> "homicide bombers" is a futile attempt at exorcising the fear of
> those who have nothing to lose and are ready to die for their
> political objective.

Well, Hamas's political objective is an Iranian-style theocracy in Palestine. I'm not sure the Pit approves of that, but it doesn't seem to have a problem with identifying with such thuggery, so long as the Pit is far away from the bloodshed it casually looks upon.

DP



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