To say “culture” and “society” is to “paint with a wide brush”. You are condemning everything and not only everything, but everything without looking deeper. Without knowing the causes, without Understanding. Printing “anti-jewish garbage” is “fucked up”. To cast widespread judgement is as you said “fucked up” too.
I am virtually certain that they would be. The difference between our military heroes and the suicide bombers is that the military at least tries to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. Whether we try hard enough is another question, but we try to knock out the enemies capability to wage war.
With the suicide bombers, their entire point is to kill innocent civilians. There is no conceivable way that a person blowing himself up in a gambling hall, or pizza parlor is going to have any effect on the enemies ability to effectively wage war. (Ignore the reduction to absurdity of saying that there might be a soldier present).
If you are at war, and I believe that the Palestinians are, then it is acceptable to try to kill the military forces of the enemy. It is not acceptable to intentionally target innocent civilians.
Would you please understand. Not “because we disapprove of mass murder” I very much disagree with mass murder too. It is because you have no problems with ignorance. We must understand ALL side/opinions/views to make informed judgements and deisions for ourselves. To "write something off as “evil” is to be ignorant.
Quite the reverse. The deeper we dig, the more wholesale our condemnation becomes.
Jodi: “Society is fucked up” != “They [individually] are all fucked up.”
Okay, Jodi. By that token, however, American society is fucked up because of its abortion bombers and gay-bashers and McVeighite militias and IRA gun-runners, and European society is fucked up because of its neo-Nazi skinheads, and Indian society is fucked up because of its RSS-trained communal rioters, and so on and so forth. After all, Palestinian society and government doesn’t officially support mass murder of civilians any more than do those other nations in which many, many individuals support it. So if all we’re really saying is “Human society is fucked up in its embrace of violence against the innocent, and this is especially prevalent nowadays in the wretched situation in Palestine”, I’ve got no problem with that.
gobear: Suicide bombing isn’t an anomaly in Arab society
Which Arab society? Suicide bombing is certainly rarer in many Arab countries than it is among non-Arabs in, say, Turkey or Sri Lanka. Is Turkish or Sri Lankan society therefore more “fucked up” than those Arab nations?
Consider: if a devastating event killed thousands of Palestinians at once, do you think Americans would dance, sing, and celebrate?
I have no doubt some would, particularly among extremist pro-Israelis, both right-wing Jews and certain millennialist Christians who believe the Palestinians need to be eradicated and the Jews reoccupy all of the Holy Land for biblical prophecies to be fulfilled. And what do you think the reaction would be if we learned that a massive bombing in Afghanistan certainly killed Osama bin Laden and lots of al-Qaeda members as well as thousands of other Afghanis? There’d be parties all over this country. Sure, most people would be celebrating the victory over our particular enemies rather than the “collateral damage”; but remember that the rejoicing Palestinians were also celebrating what they saw as a general victory against our country, whom they sincerely view as an enemy bent on their destruction, rather than the individual deaths of the innocent. (Remember also the hundreds of post-9/11 statements of support and sympathy from Palestinian organizations and officials, which didn’t get all the air time that the video of some 25 rejoicing Palestinians got.)
Indifference to and approval of the suffering of others in the pursuit of one’s own cause is fucked up. There is no binary distinction between cultures that are afflicted with this evil and cultures that aren’t; there is only a spectrum of varying levels. There’s no question IMHO that current Palestinian society is farther towards the scary end of that spectrum than current American society is, but we’re all on the spectrum nevertheless.
Pocaccho: Where are the prominent Arab voices condemning the suicide bombers? Where are the mullahs who are denouncing this practice as evil and contrary to the teachings of the Koran?
Well, I’ve personally heard several Arab Muslim clerics denouncing this practice, most recently at the April 20 antiwar march in DC. I’ve also read condemnations by prominent Arab intellectuals and clerics like Edward Said, Abdul Malak Mujahid, Sheik al-'Aziz al-Sheik (the mufti of Saudi Arabia), Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and as-Sayyid Tantawi, as well as the National Arab Journalists Association. Maybe what you should be asking is not why aren’t Arabs opposing suicide bombings, but why their statements to that effect don’t get any attention in mainstream media.
Remember, Palestinians have generally been among the most secular of Muslim national communities. The fact that they now include a large minority of religious fanatics hasn’t eradicated that aspect of their society.
You all just wait until Collounsbury finds out you are talking about the Middle East!
There’s nothing funnier than a stupid guy talking down to people more intelligent than he. We already know the reasons why Palestinians commit suicide bombings: they hate Israelis and are trying to kill them. That’s it. No amount of excuses–“oh, they’re oppressed; they live in squalid refugee camps; they feel powerless and unmanned”–is going to change my opinion of suicide bombing. There is no cause that can possibly justify the coldblooded murder of schoolchildren on a bus. None. Period.
It’s also easier to just smear someone with the label “bigot” instead of trying to actually argue with their position … .
Is insluts how you deal with those who dissagree with you?
**
I guess since you said “that’s is…period” It is true.
Really? I thought that was all I was doing for the past hour.
No, it’s how I insult people who make asinine arguments. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the Pit.
So once we “understand” the Palestinian suicide bombers, once we “look deeper,” then what? How does that stop the terror? Do you have a solution? Pray impart your wisdom, O Compassionate and Understanding One.
You can say with certenty that there are no religious leaders in the Palestianian state who condem suicide bombing. None? Christian, Muslim, or Jewish religious leaders, they all accept suicide bombing?
CRorex: *Yes there are some religious leaders condeming the suicide bombings.
BUT THEY ARE NOT THE RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN THE PALESTINIAN STATE! *
Well, even Arafat has repeatedly condemned the suicide bombings and demanded that they stop. Whether we believe in his sincerity is another question, but I’m not willing to label an entire society uniquely “fucked up” because its chief executive may well be a liar.
The point that escapes you, my Ethiopian frere, is that it is perfectly possible to understand ALL sides of an issue and THEN conclude (with a full grasp of the relevant facts, if not every detail) that one side’s actions are so inexcusable as to be fucked up (or, if you will, evil). That is not “writing something off.” It is seeing, grasping, evaluating, and concluding.
I see that many Palestinian youth are raised to think that mass murder is a positive thing, garnering holy rewards. I grasp that they believe there are valid reasons to turn children into mass murderers. I evaluate whether such “valid reasons” exist in this case, or could ever exist. I conclude they do not and could not.
In turn, you call me a bigot and you accuse me of judging from ignorance. In fact, however, you have failed to produce one iota of evidence that I am either bigoted or ignorant. So, basically, you say stupid things and then call people names. Not the strongest intellectual position ever taken by a poster on this board.
KIMSTU, for “Damn, is that fucked up or what?,” feel free to read "“Human society is fucked up in its embrace of violence against the innocent, and this is especially prevalent nowadays in the wretched situation in Palestine.” 
MILO – Truthfully, I think both positions are probably so eminently attackable that if C’MAN ever does see this, he’ll run through us all like a mower and, yea, the Pit shall flow with blood.
Kimstu: Tantawi appears to have recanted in recent months and now appears to back suicide attacks. His line of reasoning now seems to be that directed suicide attacks against civilians might be impermissable, but attacks that kill civilians as collateral damage are jim-dandy ( the example given was bombing a settlement ). In fact a senior cleric that was opposed to this line of reasoning seems to have been forced out and replaced with a hardliner that supports suicide-bombing.
It should be noted that the position of Grand Mufti in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia is a government-appointed post, though one which at this echelon is generally for life, like a Supreme Court Justice. In that context Palestinians who support suicide attacks have dismissed the calls of non-Palestinian clerics as being the result of government pressure ( whether there is any truth to that is unclear ). Instead they turn to young Islamist clerics among groups such as Hamas that have little real religious standing worldwide, but a great deal in Islamist circles.
I wonder how much of this debate is over semantics, really. The fact is that there is indeed a culture of violence pervading Palestinian society in the occupied territories ( I have no idea what the situation among Palestinians in, say, Jordan ), which has been ratcheted up alarmingly in the last few years ( see varying poll results I’ve posted elsewhere, with support for suicide bombings zooming from ~25% a couple of years ago to the ~65-75% of today ). That’s not quite the same thing as saying Palestinian culture is bankrupt or evil as a blanket statement. But it does say that that present-day element of Palestinian society certainly is.
I would not necessarily extrapolate even that facet to the whole of the Arab world, though. The concept of the modern-day suicide bomber ( if we exclude historical anomalies, like the Nizari sect during its militant medieval heyday ) is a recent one, dating back in terms of religious apologia mostly to the 80’s and revolutionary Iran. It seems to have been introduced as part of the Iran-Iraq war. Indeed even as militant a figure as Hezbollah’s spritual leader, a ferocious enemy of Israel and the U.S., was troubled by the issue and wouldn’t fully sanction it - the Hezbollah cadres had to do an ‘end-run’ and go to Iran to find sympathetic clerics willing to give them relgious cover ( by the way, this same cleric, Fadallah, oddly enough was among the first to criticize ObL and the Sept. 11 attack as unIslamic ). To this day it remains a contentious issue. By and large support for the concept does not seem widespread in the Arab world, except, hypocritically in my eye ( though of course there are weasely justifications ), for the case of Israel, where there is more ( but still not unqualified ) support.
Anyhow just to throw out a different voice, I give you a Palestinian moderate, Sari Nusseibeh, who opposes suicide-bombing ( and violence generally ). The militants, of course, consider him something of an ‘Uncle Tom’, even though he was a leader in the first intifida:
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/oct/011018.nusseibeh.html
http://www.jewsweek.com/israel/067.htm
http://www.shaml.org/ground/Nusseibeh/What%20Next.htm
http://www.shaml.org/ground/Nusseibeh/New%20York%20Times%20Columnist.htm
- Tamerlane
So you are saying that there are times when blowing up a schoolbus full of children is acceptable?
The difference between Palestine society/suicide bombers and American society/gay bashers, neo-nazis, etc. is that American society at large is that when a gay man is beaten to death, the overall American society is outraged, and willing to condemn and distance itself from the sociapaths who did it. When a synagogue is defaced or burned down, the society condemns the party that does it. With the freedoms in America, we put up with hateful thought and speech, but we do not put up with committing murders or vandalism that flows from those thoughts.
When a palestinian straps nails and metal parts to himself and blows up himself along with dozens of innocent people, the Palestinian society calls him a martyr. The society offers recompense to his or her family. The society teaches its children that this is a good thing. The society not only allows the hateful thoughts against Israel and Jews, but it rewards those who put those hateful thoughts into action.
Thanks, Tamerlane. A well-informed voice of reason sure sounds sweet, even if it’s inappropriate in the Pit.
A very fair statement, IMO.
- Tamerlane
Kimstu - Yeah, well, I’ve never been very good at this Pit thing - I’m always trying to turn it into GD ;).
Okay, I’m off to lunch - Everyone please return to your regularly scheduled torrents of abuse :D.
- Tamerlane
I think if we were to say a “culture or society” does not necessarily represent ALL the views of ALL the people, we might have nothing left to argue about.
Fucked up or not.