My understanding of the "human shield" situation is not that each gunmen has his own boy or group of boys, but that snipers will take advantage of the preoccupation of troops with rioting children, including teenagers, to take shots at troops. I do not find that inherently incredible.
As for becoming heedless of their own lives, or the lives of their children, for the cause:
Do you infer from the behavior of kamikaze pilots during World War II that the Japanese were victims driven to despair?
Do you infer from Nazi death worship (for example, the Party anthem, "The Horst Wessel Song" extols martyrdom) that they were victims driven to despair?
Arabs have an "honor culture", where it is not unusual to kill one's daughter for shaming the family, or to get into vendettas. What is driving the Palestinians crazy is the impotency of the Arab world, and its inability to compete on any level with the West. Meanwhile, the existence of Israel is a running sore, proof that the Arab world cannot even control its ostensible territory, and also of the superiority of Western ways of doing things. To top off the horror, it is the long despised Jews who are succeeding in building something productive in the wasteland of Palestine.
Some put a religious twist on matters, and suppose that a return to shari'ah will cure things; some put a secular twist on matters, and suppose that they are somehow the victims of neo-colonialism, and that if they could only get rid of that, they might once more flourish on the world stage; and some just focus narrowly on taking out their sense of frustration on Jews and others...... |
