Those fine young men, nobly giving their lives to blow up babies and old people. Can’t help but admire them.
Matthew Parris wrote this whole article in the London Times about the moral aspects of suicide bombers. He says: …”Both sides agree that self-sacrifice can be, on the face of it, noble.
Both sides agree that killing other people may sometimes be justified in a violent conflict.
So both sides must agree that encompassing your own death in the killing of other people may sometimes be justified, even noble. If you or I could have brought down the temple in which the Third Reich sat, killing ourselves too, that might (I presume we agree) have been a noble act.
Now we can narrow yet further the disputed ground. The insistence with which Palestinian extremists argue that Israeli civilians are not in the truest sense non-combatants suggests to me that even these Islamist militants would feel morally uncomfortable with the idea of killing people who were not complicit in an enemy’s cause. So do the Israelis: their spokesmen lay great and repeated stress on the wickedness of the murder of civilians, but I have never heard an Israeli spokesmen complain in moral terms about attacks by Arab militia on Israeli soldiers.
Are Israeli civilians, then, by their very presence, aggressors? The argument reduces to this question.
And now we can narrow the dispute one final notch. I do not think that in his heart an Israeli would deny that, if your enemy has taken land that is rightfully yours and occupied it, then not just your enemy’s army but his wife and son and daughter and servants and all who, under his protection, come to live and make their living on the stolen land, are aggressors. By their presence they aid and abet the occupation. If the Palestinian Authority were to enter and occupy parts of Israel proper, for instance, and bus in Arab farmers and merchants and builders to live there, would an Israeli in a refugee camp in Cyprus not see these as legitimate targets?
There is therefore only one question left to resolve: who are the owners of the disputed territory? This is not really a moral question at all.
In history ancient and modern, some great disputes do wheel around real moral differences between the participants. This is not one of them. It is a very Semitic war in which the principal values of all three Semitic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, are widely shared. The dispute is about the ownership of land, not about what behaviour is justified in protecting that ownership. On that we agree. The moral maze is a mirage. The turf war is real. It will be decided by force.”
Phew! Riveting stuff! Wait a minute while I vomit. Right, I feel much better now.
A few points:
Isn’t it wonderful that Mr. Parris perceives us Israeli Jews to be such a morally superior people. So true. It’s amazing we haven’t yet all committed suicide so as to vacate the land we so inconsiderately stole and stop being such nuisances.
Notice how he very subtly equates Israel with the Third Reich? You wouldn’t even notice it!
Refugees in Cyprus???? Who is he kidding, we’d all be dead!!!! Funny he should mention Cyprus, seeing it was the British who put Holocaust survivors, fresh out of hell, into refugee camps in Cyprus.
I find his neat philosophical reasoning that makes such a compelling moral case for blowing up little babies extremely brilliant.
For some reason, he thinks that “no Israeli would deny that, if your enemy has taken land that is rightfully yours and occupied it, then not just your enemy’s army but his wife and son and daughter and servants and all who, under his protection, come to live and make their living on the stolen land, are aggressors”. Wanna bet, Matty boy? This Israeli denies it. By this logic we should be shooting the children and younger siblings of suicide bombers. If they were formerly under the protection of suicide terrorist bombers and stand to gain money and honor from his noble stand they are obviously aggressors too. Maybe this is what Parris sees as moral and logical given the British behavior in India and their other Colonies. Incidentally, isn’t it funny how Israeli leaders just start talking of taking punitive action against the families of suicide terrorists by relocating them within the PA as a deterrent for future suicide terrorists and there’s an uproar among Israelis and a widespread public debate about the legality and morality of such actions. Strange, I don’t see any public debate among Palestinians about the morality of blowing up Jewish babies, and only occasionally do they say that maybe this is not the right time to use such tactics. But what am I thinking about? If any Palestinian so much as whispered a word about morality they’d be dragged through the streets and strung up in the town square, wouldn’t they?
By the way, I’m sure Five year-old Danielle Shani from Adora was especially aggressive. So was 18 month-old Sinai Keinan from Petach Tikva.
Oh, and which stolen land are we talking about here? Sounds to me like he means the whole thing, from sea to Jordan, don’t you?
I’ll give him one thing. This conflict will be decided by force. We didn’t want it this way. We went out on a limb to make peace. But force is what they want and force is what they’ll get. I’m actually quite pleased he said that because he obviously realizes who’s going to win.