lgf: The Palestinian Peace Process?

I can understand fighting with your life for something (although, thank God, I have never been forced into that situation). What I can't understand is encouraging, facilitating, and celebrating the use of children as suicide bombers.

I know the argument goes (I know, not you, kind readers, but from others): What is the difference between kids being suicide bombers and sending 20 years olds in our military into harms way? There is a huge difference: the suicide bomber is encouraged and expected to die, not for the actual event, but for the press coverage of it. The suicide bombers life is far less meaningful than the press coverage afterwards. In our military, we spend billions of dollars to make as certain as possible that our soldiers have such a training and technology advantage that as many as possible come home alive. The actual actions (clearing out neighborhoods house by house, protecting roads and people, building positive relationships with the community, etc.) are what matter, not the press coverage. When one soldier dies, it is a tragedy and we mourn. When one suicide bomber dies, their family and community celebrates their death and the death of whomever they took with them.

While we may have opinion's on Dan Rather's choice to list the soldiers that died during an evening news as a criticism of the government's policies, can you imagine Palestinian TV listing the names of suicide bombers as a criticism of the Palestinian Authority? I can't either. Instead they encourage their future to kill themselves.

lgf: The Palestinian Peace Process