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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (157964)	2/10/2005 4:50:23 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi michael97123; Re: "People giving up their life in defense of their beliefs by suicide rather than being slaughtered by an enemy or living in slavery after capture is the same as a terrorist strapping on a bomb and blowing up a disco?" Of course they're not "the same", nor did I ever say they were. But the motivations are on the same continuum. Your question belies its own prejudice by your extensive description of the motivation in the first case "rather than being slaughtered by an enemy or living in slavery after capture", while you mention only the action "strapping on a bomb and blowing up a disco" in the second. What you did was make a big deal out of the motivation in the first case, and the action in the second. You conveniently forgot to mention the "action" in the first case. Let's get it out loud and clear here. What the defenders did at Masada was to *kill their families and then kill themselves. And you left off the motivation for the second action. Let's look at the motivations that you DID list for the second action. "(R)ather than being slaughtered by an enemy". Do you know how many Palestinians have been slaughtered by the Israelis? The other half was "living in slavery". Do you know how many Palestinians are living in Israeli jails? Have you kept your eyes tightly shut or are you now aware of what is commonly done to Arab prisoners in Western prisons? Re: " No the comparison works better with Ghandi and MLK" What's your point? Did Ghandi or MLK kill his family? Or strap on a suicide belt? If either side had the attributes of Ghandi or MLK there wouldn't be a problem in the Middle East. Re: "If the Jews of Masada snuck into the soldiers quarters and killed women and children by setting their living quarters ablaze while they slept, then you might have a comparison." What's your point? In Jonestown the locals killed their own, not foreign soldier's children or whatever. Re: "Those South Vietnamese Buddhist monks are another example." An example of what? Are you trying to imply that the Buddhist monks murdered their families* before killing themselves? Tell you what. Go find an example of some other group in history that *killed their own families* and then became big heroes for their bravery. For that matter, the Palestinian suicide bombers leave their immediate families alone, at least. Did Davy Crocket *kill his family OR commit suicide* at the Alamo? Did Custer die from a self-inflicted GSW? Maybe you can find someone in Japanese history, but he's hardly considered a hero nowadays. Go find the example (of a genuine cultural hero who *killed his wife and kids*, much less hundreds of them), or admit that the situation in the Middle East is a little kookier, on the Israeli side, than you thought and that I enlightened you on the subject. Roman occupation in the Middle East was no worse or better than it was throughout the rest of their rather large empire. -- Carl