<no difference between "martyrs" who risk their own lives for their beliefs, and "martyrs" who blow up others along with themselves for theirs?>
According to Amnesty International, for 2002:
At least 1,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army, most of them unlawfully. They included some 150 children and at least 35 individuals killed in targeted assassinations. Palestinian armed groups killed more than 420 Israelis, at least 265 of them civilians and including 47 children, and some 20 foreign nationals, in targeted or indiscriminate attacks.
Both sides seem amply supplied with people willing, even eager, to risk their lives for their beliefs. And the dominant beliefs, on both sides, is that Land is more important than Peace. Every Palestinian demand for the "right of return", says this. And every new Israeli settlement, or expansion of an existing one, says the same thing.
And, no, I don't see a whole lot of difference between Israeli helicopter gunships rocketting Palestinians (targetted assassinations)in crowded urban areas, and Palestinian suicide bombers. Both sides know, in advance, that most of the dead, using those tactics, will be non-combatants. And the Israelis seem to be doing more than twice as much of it, as the Palestinians (1000+ dead vs. 420+ dead). |
