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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fred Levine who wrote (67702)	2/7/2003 5:32:50 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 70976

> tribal mentality requires that revenge be taken to any member of your tribe that did damage to any member of my tribe. That is evident as justification for the suicide bombers in Israel and the WTC. That is only one interpretation out of many. I am neither an Arab nor do I particularly care for their culture. However you should note that the same tribal mentality that you have stated, makes it very difficult for Arabs to kill a member of another "tribe" as you put it. This is because they acknowledge that by doing so they put all their loved ones in danger. Yesterday I saw this French cartoon which shows an Israeli soldier face to face with an Arab suicide bomber. The soldier says, "there has to be a way for peace" to which the Arab answers "I've been killing myself trying to tell you that". Clearly there is something these people desire which they love more than life. Given that every creature in the world values its life dearly, a case could be made that if those suicide bombers could see a better option open to them, self preservation would have prevented them from becoming suicide bombers. Furthermore, they are not celebrated because they exact revenge, as you have stated. They are considered heroes to their people because they sacrificed themselves for a cause that their population can relate to. Now I don't want to get into discussing Arab-Israeli conflict or religious debates. Nor am I approving of killing civilians in the name of a "cause" whatever that may be (including removal of Saddam). But the cultural and religious differences are not as they have been presented in public. BTW, I hardly hear a discussion in US about the Israeli practice of blowing up homes of relatives of captured Palestinians. Seems very much like the tribal vengence that you described. ST