Why Do I Know Your Name?

wow- i was totally confused at 1st. the image looked so much like a renoir. i clicked on your ad just to find out what was going on with the image. i am so glad you are doing this. an excellent dialog to have. i need to think about it. will get back. thanks again.

Apparently media attention ranks first these days, hence we know this child’s name, and can look into his eyes. This is one of Mohammad’s lost boys. Has he gained my pity? Yes, indeed. At whom do I get angry for his lost life and who do I blame for the lives he has taken? The terrorist leaders are insanely eating their young. What I feel almost can’t be said out loud it is so idiotic but here goes…Mothers, wives, women: Where are you?

Golda Meir said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” This child looks like one of Peter Pan’s lost boys. His face recedes while all the gaudy trappings he’s surrounded with come to the visual foreground. It’s almost as if he’s dead already. His passivity has a feminine quality to it–but that makes sense now that girls and women are also being recruited to be suicide bombers. Is being a suicide bomber now more an act of passive resignation than one of masculine heroics?

He looks like a dozen adolescents that I have known–that vaguely sullen, defiant look produced when the local authorities challenge autonomy with invasive questions: “Have you finished your homework?”, “Would you set the table?”
But this man-child is holding a gun and is represented as an angel of death, an icon. I don’t know how to interpret the the black with the gold script. To my Western eye, it is excessive, exotic, even vulgar, homoerotic. It reminds me of the iconic picture of Che Guevara. Something about the intensity of the expression and the simplicity of the image–stylized, pared-down, focused–communicates “revolutionary warrior.” It also reminds me of Japanese anime: the femininized male face, the warrior stance, the simple style.
I am interested in that this picture was created and that it was so widely published. There have been many suicide bombers: not so many get their faces on the front page of the NYT. Is this because the media feeds the public’s apparently insatiable appetite for the beautiful, the dramatic, the erotic, the archetypal? No doubt this was intended as inspiration for some. For someone like me, I am sure it was meant as a threat, to inspire fear, uncertainty, anomie.

s(am)iam goy(i)a(m)

You know his name because he was responsible for the deaths of Israeli Jews.
But I have some questions… Did you hear about the 30 Palestinians, including children, who have been killed just this month by Israelis? Did you hear about the hundreds of shells being fired into the Gaza Strip every day? Did you hear about the closing of the Karni crossing and what effect that has? Did you hear that the U.S. has cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority, and is trying to pressure everyone else to do so, to punish them for their choices in those free democratic elections?

I think the primary reason for the extensive coverage of this kid in particular is the success of the Israeli Wall, which greatly reduced the number of successful attacks of this type.
The other is the poor gun discipline here. Note that his finger is on the trigger. That’s the sign of someone who has had very little or bad training. It is a constant theme in pictures of Palestinians, terrorists, street thugs, security forces, of how they seem to play at fighting, even though it’s life and death. I think that speaks to how so much of this is purely about the imagery rather than true fighting.

New Kids on The Block, The bad boy as rebel has been an extremely successful archetype as marketing icon. From rock’n'roll to bomb’n'go, the james dean suicide mission made sexy. Hope I die before I get old, whose generation are we talking about; perhaps a media intertwined world where the image of youth that has always been sold between revolution and salvation is now reaching for a gun instead of a guitar. For those about to rock we salute you…
Of course the magnitude of actually taking some lives other than your own in the name of a supposed greater cause while snuffing out your own life before its prime, what type of rock’n'roll hero would do that?
But put in a different cultural context you could see the enshrinement of cult status and peer recognition for disaffected palestinian youth.
Is this similar to christian rock and its appropriation of counter culture modalities; is there a marketing ploy in mid-east to turn would-be boy bands into bomber brigands?

thirdeyepushpin: I like the image of boy bands. That definitely works.
It is very interesting. I wrote earlier from home where my computer monitor has less good resolution. From my work computer, the youth’s expression is less defiant and more sad, hopeless.
ummaddulla: no, we haven’t heard about the Palestinian children who have been killed, unless we are paying very close attention.
You raise a good point. I find it hard to evaluate if we know his name just because he killed Jews. The intentionality of this portrait is part of it. The Israeli authorities are not hauntingly pretty youth nor do they engage in this kind of marketing campaigns. They are the wall, the backdrop, against which this portrait is hung. It seems to me that the fact that this picture exists and has been published widely is evidence that the Palestinians lack other kinds of power.

marysz, from your source of selection, more quotes from Golda;
“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”
“We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.”
Regarding your Peter Pan analogy, it fits well with the stereotype of Palestinians; A mischievous little boy who refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as leader of his gang, the Lost Boys.
Golda would chuckle and sign off on this.

“Mothers, wives, women: Where are you?”
Maybe it’s stereotyping, but my impression is that in this culture, mothers, wives and women don’t have much say in what goes on.
At the same time, when you’re pretty sure there’s NO FUTURE for your son, maybe the front page of the NYT seems like a pretty good option.

We know his name because the people that sent him first made this record. As we at BAGnews learned last fall (Vested Interest), there is likely no macroscopic evidence left positively identifying Sami Salim Hamad. The movie Paradise Now (2005) [imdb] documents the suicide bomb delivery process, one step being the video recording of a last statement.
As AOG points out, the poor gun discipline shows this soldier didn’t get much training. There are problems that armies can’t solve.

The gold letters on black simply say things like the Islamic testimony of faith “La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah” (There is no deity but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger). You find this statement all over the Muslim world; it’s something that Muslims repeat many times a day, and it’s the statement one says to become a Muslim. From what I understand, this attack was carried out by Islamic Jihad, which is more hardline than Hamas, and considers Hamas to have sold out by getting involved in elections and government.
The BAG: “Maybe it’s because this is not a 21 year old man, as the family represented and has been reported, but actually a more baby faced boy of about 16.”
Has someone confirmed how old he was? His family says that he had finished high school and started university courses, before stopping them to work. I have no idea how old he was, but why do you assume he’s 16?
About ages – Arabs seem to count the age differently than what I’m used to. This used to confuse me… for example, where I would say I’m five months pregnant, they would call it six, because they count that as being in the sixth month. And my sons are always telling me that their schoolmates and cousins claim to be a year older than they are, but it’s because they count this way, so for example, after a boy has his seventh birthday, they’ll call him eight. Besides that, we don’t really celebrate birthdays, so people often have to think if you ask how old they are.
Societies are different, too, so a young man of 18 who’s out working and supporting his family is probably considered more a man than a boy; it’s not unusual for a young Palestinian woman that age to be married already.
As for his gun discipline, he wasn’t being sent out to use a gun.
Arab/Muslim mothers actually have a lot of say, and their sons usually respect them more than anyone, and try to make them happy. This is a very basic belief in Islam; “Paradise is at the feet of the mother”. If you’re not fasmiliar with Islamic societies, you might be surprised at the respect given to the mother, even – or especially – by grown men.

It looks like the gun strap is strangling him, or pulling his neck like a noose, or one of those canes they’d use to pull untalented entertainers off stage. The gun, a symbol of violence, strangles this kid, he’s in its grip and it’s leading him to his and others’ death. Maybe it’s more like a leash, then. He’s lashed to violence. In his wake, more violence will follow, on both sides. But lots of young people have a death wish. If it’s not skateboarding or driving fast or binge drinking it’s suicide and murder. Not that all young people think like this, of course. But in an environment where violence is put on a pedestal, displayed as a worthy option to change the world, young people will keep falling into death’s noose.

What if, instead of exploding bombs and AK-47’s, we had a war of the photographs?
“Aargh! They sent us a photo of a boy holding a rifle. And all that lettering,”
“They must be mad. We must retaliate.”
“Yes, but how? Should we send a photo of our bomb detecting robot?”
“No, no, no. We need a 12-year-old boy and a grenade, no, two grenades, one in each hand. Right? Send for the hair-dresser and the photographer…”

I made the mistake of reading the comments (TalkBack) for this story in the Jerusalem Post. Now I’m more depressed than ever.
People are so brave when they’re protected by anonymity on the internet. The surprising percentage of posters shouting for the complete eradication of the Palestinians was sickening. They ranted about the “superiority of the Jews to all Muslims”. “Jews are more humane.” “Bury the dead Muslims with pigs, that will keep them out of heaven, deny them everything!” Do they not have any idea of what they are saying? Do they later regret their messages of hate?
After looking into the eyes of Sami Salim, I can only think of the depth of desperation he must have felt to overcome the basic instinct of survival and use his body as a weapon against an enemy he cannot make peace with.
(I was going to comment on the boy’s choice of T-shirts but it doesn’t seem to matter now.)

Anyone interested in a few images that show the human results of the shelling campaign Israel has been carrying out against the people of “unoccupied” Gaza for the past few weeks can see them here.
Since the war of the guns — the war of tit for tat injustice goes on — it is not surprising that the war of the images goes on. As I once heard the author Alice Walker sermonize: “only justice can stop a curse.”

Cactus: “What if, instead of exploding bombs and AK-47’s, we had a war of the photographs?”
Well, the Palestinians could have photos of exploding bombs, AK-47’s and stones… and the Israelis could put up photos of all their weapons.
Besides rifles, there would be lunatic settlers with government-issued automatic weapons, tanks, special house-demolishing Caterpillar bulldozers, helicopter gunships, fighter jets, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons (not that Israel will acknowledge them or sign up to any treaties, unlike Iran). And they might as well include photos of every weapon in the U.S. military arsenal, including tactical nuclear weapons, because Bush has promised to put American weapons and military personnel on the line to defend Israel. And they could add photos of the billions of dollars given to Israel by the American taxpayer, to enable them to
buy all these weapons so they can illegally occupy Palestinian territory and make the U.S. as hated as they are.

I was going to comment that the boy looked like he was being pulled offstage by the neckstrap, but Victor F beat me to it. This is indeed an arty, staged, almost quaint photograph, so the vaudeville analogy seems suitable. He seems to be *playing* at being a soldier (even I know better than to have a finger on the trigger “for show”).
We are assuming that this is a boy rather than a man because of the soft face and lack of evidence of shaving. Not even a shadow of peach-fuzz! Without seeing an adam’s apple, it could be a portrait of a ranch-woman from 150 years ago: straight-on gaze with little emotional content.
The angled text is intriguing. Legible on one side only, I almost get the feeling of “in one ear and out the other”… and that what is coming out is blaring noise rather than coherent thought. (Arabic is read from right to left, IIRC.)
He is backed into a corner.

Several commenters have touched on his feminine or pre-manly appearance. I may be way out on a limb here, but the thought occurred. If (as we’ve been told) homosexuality is as thoroughly condemned in fundamentalist Islam as it is in fundamentalist Christianity, could it be a factor? It hadn’t occurred to me before, but there is a high instance of gay teens committing suicide in this country. Is it so unrealistic to wonder if some of the young ’suicide bombers’ are also gay taking the honorable path. How better to show family and community, and perhaps one’s self, that you are a good Muslim? Perhaps ummabdulla could comment on this (not to put her on the spot).
This is a youthful face…..has he ever shaved? hauksdottir mentioned it could even be a woman; and we have that thought in our heads because of the wedding bombing (which may also have been pure propaganda). However, his expression is one of resignation and resoluteness. He doesn’t look ready to die, or to kill. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know why this picture is being taken. It may be a grab from a video, which would account for the soft focus.
Because of the wide distribution I assume it was planned for a non-Muslim audience. Therefore the lettering acts as decoration. The black backdrop with the gold brings the eyes to the gold on the headband and then to the boy’s face. The gun strap forming a noose around his neck leads to the gun pointed to the sky, ready but not yet deadly. Just as the boy seems to be ready, but not yet deadly.
The only word we can read is ARMY on his shirt. Is this a turn on the US army of occupation? A warning that he represents their army? Or is it simply the one jarring, out-of-place element in the photo, just as the US army is out of place in Iraq?

I feel and understand the urgency and distress in your voice, ummabdullah. My post about the women taking their power was based on my knowlege of middle eastern family life from good friends from the middle east I have met and befriended. Unknown to most people in the US, women in the middle east have considerable power, and it wouldn’t be outside imagination to have some mullah’s mother take him by the hair and give him an earful, and he would listen.
My first understanding of the “Palestinian problem” came when I met a palestinian who was a friend of a Native American – I was working at USC for a Native American Teachers’ Program – and realized that my sympathy and understanding of what happened to native Americans was aptly applied to what happened to the Palestinians.
Golda Meier, whose words I had admired, became General Custer when I listened with “native American ears”. “There are no such people as Palentinians” and “God gave this land to us” sounded very familiar, and I was ashamed I had never looked closely at what had happened 60 years ago.
I also found, surprisingly, that many Arab friends I have known don’t really care about Palestinians, considering them troublesome, and haven’t really lent a hand to them. But one must remember that countries of the ME are small and politically disorganized, having been colonized. (Lebanon itself is only 125 miles long and divided politically along religious lines). We are now paying the price all over the world for deisions made (or not made) over one hundred years ago.
My heart breaks that I will never see the Cedars, and I refuse to visit Jerusalem, or Masada, and I know I won’t explore the treasures of Iran in my lifetime. we are all losing the heritage of humanity – our gifts to one another – by this mutual destruction. Then there is that filthy oil…
I didn’t mean to rant, but this sure made me feel better. My salaams to everyone who posts and reads…

itwasnt me -”this sure made me feel better”. Me as well !

He looks like one of my 9th graders. Decked in flags and amo– where is his mother? His teachers?

So who’s exploiting whom with this image? If the Western media has plastered this babyfaced bomber everywhere, who gains? The Arabs? How?
Consider:
1) this image on the front page of The New York Times, which offers a consistently pro-Bush and pro-Israel viewpoint
2) ARMY T-shirt (yes, that *does* get our attention in the U.S.)
3) pretty face (yes, movie-star handsome gets our attention too)
4) “Iran pledges $50m Palestinian aid”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4914334.stm
5) “Israel blames Hamas for bombing”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4917704.stm
6) “Israel Warns of Hamas, Iran Links”
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-04-20-voa32.cfm
7) “Hamas Names a Militant to Security Post” wherein this quote: “In Washington, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said of the appointment, ‘This is just another window into the nature of this Hamas-led government.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/world/21mideast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Uh-oh. Hamas + Iran = TROUBLE. Western conclusion: Hey, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to bomb Iran *after all.*
Next time you’re in a crowd, think about what’s scarier: someone who “looks like” a suicide bomber or someone who doesn’t? If the idea of a youthful innocent blowing himself up next to you kind of freaks you out, then you have the answer to my original question.

Maybe it’s because this is not a 21 year old man, as the family represented and has been reported, but actually a more baby faced boy of about 16.
You call him a “boy” because to us a 16-year-old is a boy. But a Palestinian 16-year-old doesn’t have the luxury of being a “boy”. A 16-year-old on the West Bank is legally a child only if that 16-year-old is an Israeli settler. A 16-year-old Jewish boy is legally a child, and under the protection of Israeli juvenile law. A 16-year-old Muslim or Christian boy on the West Bank legally becomes a man at sixteen, and lives under Israeli military law. That is the law of the Occupation, it has been the case for Palestinians since long before Sami Salim Hamad was even born, and it is not by the Palestinians’ choice. In the world Hamad lived all his life, the thought that a 16-year-old would have any of the protections or privileges of childhood is a fairy tale.
When he was a live 16-year-old, we neither knew or cared that was legally no longer a child. It’s only because he’s dead that we are saying “oh he’s so young he’s only a child”. We will assert his child-ness now only because there is an inherent rebuke in there for the Palestinians – how can you let your children die? When Palestinian children are alive, they are legally turned into little adults, perhaps because then we don’t have to think of “the good guys” killing so many hundreds of children. But should one of them blow himself up, we instantly re-endow him with his childhood – the loss of which never bothered us before – so we can cluck over how young he is. It’s as if a Palestinian’s childhood can be switched on or off, depending on how we need to perceive him or her.

Asta, you have audacity..” reading the comments (TalkBack) for this story in the Jerusalem Post”
I had difficulty finishing the article as it wove its way though fact, blood, conjecture, flying bodies,sorting/ shaping/slanting and a free message/massage.
1)”..the first successful suicide bombing since Hamas took over the Palestinian government some three weeks ago” (any possible motive here or simply a time line thing ? )
2) “Islamic Jihad has been behind the past seven suicide bombings in Israel” ( good we have a fact, but is this a setup for )
3) The new Hamas-led PA government, however, called the suicide bombing a legitimate response to Israeli aggression. “We think that this operation..is a direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people,” said Khaled Abu Helal, spokesman for the Interior Ministry. The phrase * legitimate response is inferred from the Hamas quote* rather than inferring why can’t Herb Keinon, Judy Siegel two experienced AP reporters source a Hamas member directly. I infer from the Hamas quote that occupation results in resistance, nothing new here.
from THE AUSTRALIAN
4)” He had reportedly been a member of Hamas until a few weeks ago but left when that organisation, *honouring its commitment to a ceasefire with Israel*, refused to dispatch him ( might this be true ? how shocking ! )
Legitimacy is; terrorists/brave soldiers, sloppy trigger finger/disciplined trigger digit, vicious/virtuous wives, toxic/truthful stories, street thugs/mossad, earthly stone missles/targetted airbone assassinations — as always — in the proverbial eye of the –

itwasntme: “Unknown to most people in the US, women in the middle east have considerable power, and it wouldn’t be outside imagination to have some mullah’s mother take him by the hair and give him an earful, and he would listen.”
Exactly! And if the mullah was teaching a class and his mother needed something, he’d probably interrupt his class to do it for her, and all of the students would accept that without any question. But most people don’t understand this. And the administration and military have this policy of trying to humiliate Arabs/Muslims by sending women to tell them what to do… it’s just stupid. The interrogators at Guantanamo and other places use women interrogators purposely because they think it will humiliate the men; every time the government names a “Czar” to handle propaganda to Muslim countries, it has to be a woman (Charlotte Beers, Margaret Tutweiler, Karen Hughes – and Elizabeth Cheney in some high post in charge of Middle Eastern Affairs). Then they send them to the Middle East to show how great their women are, as if the Arab/Muslim women they’re addressing are a bunch of ignorant oppressed fools – never mind that they’re probably more highly educated, assertive, and prominent… but I digress…
“I also found, surprisingly, that many Arab friends I have known don’t really care about Palestinians, considering them troublesome, and haven’t really lent a hand to them.”
Yes, this is somewhat true. In Lebanon, the Palestinians were living in refugee camps and thought to be taking jobs from Lebanese, and bringing trouble to Lebanon, etc. In Kuwait (and maybe all the Gulf), Palestinians made up the professional class; they were the teachers, doctors, engineers, accountants, etc., and they were treated very well; many Palestinians were born and raised in these countries. But when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Yasser Arafat (who had worked in Kuwait as an engineer) sided with Saddam, and Kuwaitis didn’t take kindly to that. There had been maybe 500,000 Palestinians here (compared to only about 800,000 Kuwaitis), and many of them were forced to leave after that. Not many people anywhere liked Yasser Arafat, and that includes Palestinians.
On the other hand, Islamic groups have always supported Palestine for Islamic reasons; there are three holy places in Islam – I’m not counting all those Shia “shrines” – and one of them is Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic), which most Muslims can’t even visit. Now that Hamas is running the government and not Arafat’s people, I think Islamic groups will try to step up and support them in the face of cutoffs of aid from the West. (Which is fine with me, but is that what the West really wants?)
And public opinion in places like Egypt is all for the Palestinians. But I think Palestinians feel pretty much like they’re abandoned. The Christian Palestinians don’t get any support from the right-wing Christians either – in fact, they’re big supporters of Zionism…

My apologies to anyone who’s thinking: what does this have to do with analysis of the photo itself…?
Cactus, I don’t claim to understand what someone like him is thinking. But I think it’s wrong to equate what they do with an act of suicide as we think of it, where someone is despondent for some reason – their job, their relationships, some kind of abuse, etc. – and gives up on life altogether. Suicide like that is expressly forbidden in Islam.
These attacks are very different; these guys think of themselves as soldiers making the ultimate sacrifice. (Like when an American soldier loses his life in some heroic act to save his fellow soldiers, even though he probably knew he was going to die – like diving on top of a live grenade or something. No one thinks of it in the same way that we think of a desperate person shooting himself in the head.) And they do it sincerely, believing that they’ll enter Paradise and be able to intercede for relatives and friends so that they’ll also enter Paradise.
The West calls it suicide and they call it martyrdom, and the difference is more than semantics. The psychological profiles done by Westerners, looking at it from the point of view of their own attitudes about suicide are way off, in my opinion. Robert Pape seemed to be pretty accurate when talking about suicide attacks, though, from what I read of him – and let me say again that I’m not an expert either.
By the way, I don’t know where this ridiculous idea about putting pigskin on Muslims so they can’t get to Paradise came from. It’s just silly… if someone attains Paradise, God/Allah is not so stupid that He would cancel it and send him to hell because someone put pigskin on him against his will. We aren’t held accountable for anything that is forced on us. For example, even though pork is prohibited, if someone is starving, and the only meat available is from the pig, then he should eat what he needs to stay alive. And if someone threatens me with death unless I renounce Islam, I’m allowed to renounce it (while silently intending otherwise). So the pigskin thing is really stupid…

This “boy” is no worse than your US soldiers committing similar “heinous acts” every single hour of every single day in the mid-east. He is no different than the Racist Jews or the Racist Yanks, lobbing million dollar US made missiles from million dollar US made choppers towards the rock throwing Palestinians. The only difference is a desparate “in your face”, style of delivering that death. There is nothing wrong with that picture except that they have been pushed to such extremes. No hidden messages to be found..Give them back their land and I’d bet that the violence would end. Pretty simple.

Why do we see the tenderness of the boy-man and do not see the circumstances that put him on the path to leaving the earth for a paradise?
USA and Israel are producing every day number of these determined young people to fight the only way left to them.
Today’s headline on the net: Israel is threatening to reoccupy Gaza. That will result in more martyrs and more genocide of the Palestinians.
Sorely missing is the support and solidarity for the Palestinian people. If there was an alternative provided these young people would seize it. The blame should not be put on them, but on us!

Ummabdulla, my first post yesterday was my feeble attempt at the irony of dueling images (instead of actual bullets and bombs). I apologize if it came off sounding like I was making light of the horrors of war, especially in the Mid-East. Sometimes my brain doesn’t want to process all the insanity and just goes off into gallows humor.
Thanks for clarifying my question about the reasons why these boys do this. And as for the pork skins, some people in this country take their favorite parts of the bible very literally. In their delusions I suppose they think everybody does that so they latch onto something they can understand about another religion and twist it into some idea of punishment or torture. I don’t understand it either. (Of course, the bible also has prohibitions about pork, but they conveniently ignore that.)
SingingNun, your excellent point about how we perceive youth depending on our political position made me wonder. I’m not smart enough to do this, but I just wonder if a parallel could be drawn to the way we in this country treat boys (usually black) when we want to punish them for murder. Suddenly a 13 or 15 year-old is considered an adult because they’ve committed an adult crime and we can send them to prison to rid ourselves of them. Is that really any different than the Israeli government treating their enemy’s child as a combatant, while protecting their own children?

Way off topic but brought to mind by Cactus’ post: Also age of sexual consent being raised higher and higher, with “consenting” 15 year-olds being charged with sex crimes. We draw the age of consent where it pleases us, obviously bringing logical disorder to many areas.
I enjoy your posts and always learn something Ummabdullah.

Cactus, I didn’t take your “war or photos” idea as making light of war. I thought it was an interesting idea, and that seeing which weapons were available to each side might actually help people understand the situation.
A lot of people think that if the American people actually understood the situation, and the role they were playing, they might object. That’s why there’s so much effort made to make sure they don’t get that information.

Very true…..when the American public learned the truth about what was going on in Viet Nam, opinion turned against it and those who promoted it. I don’t think they will let that happen again. At least not if they can stop it.

Cactus said: I don’t think they will let that happen again.
Except for that small matter of Iraq. And maybe Iran.

Cactus, on re-reading your post, I see that I misunderstood who “they” were, so ignore my previous post. You’re right.

American War Criminal: Re: “racist Jews”
Thanks — you have provided a powerful reminder of the enduring rationale for an armed Jewish state. You and Ahmadinejad make a pretty good team. It’s people like you who make me wonder if my only two options in life are a) to be despised for my inability to defend myself (i.e., the condition of Jews in the modern world before the establishment of an armed Jewish state) or b) to be despised for having the ability to defend myself. Given these options, I’ll take the latter every time.

GR, “racists Jews” did you intentional exclude Racists Yanks, if so I’m wondering why ?
I know of no nation or ethnicity free of racism do you ?
You might be surprised to learn that a great 20th racist was Winston Churchill, but this quote on Jews I suspect you will undoubtly enjoy;
“.. but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/zvb/zvb1.html
If you happened to be a member of other groups ouch !
…his comments made in 1937: “I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place.” His ideas about Palestinians were similar. Of course among other things, without Balfour and strong support for the Zionist movement in the UK there would be no Israel. (I’n not suggesting that such a state shouldn’t exist ) I guess I’ve got the wrong Jewish friends who separate themselves from their right wing Semitic brothers.
Perhaps that cigar chomping statesman an idol of “W” should be given the last word and something we might all consider before selectively spouting off about racism;
“Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies,”

I just wish people would cease to wear their religion on their sleeves. I was raised to revere faith as a private thing.
It has to be private, it’s too intimate for strangers to intervene and confiscate for their own.

To jt from BC: you’re right on (almost) all points, of course. Churchill was a classic racist — although his endorsement of Jews as a race was more an exception than a rule for members of his class and generation. You don’t see me denying that Jews are as prone to the worst human foibles as anyone; I do, however, take issue with the implicit assumption that I believe informs many of the posts in this thread: that the Jews’ moral failings rise (or fall) to the level that Jews, alone among the peoples of the world, are not entitled to establish a state explicitly dedicated to their preservation as a group, and are not as entitled to live free from the threat of random bombings as anyone else.
Points on which you are wrong: 1) I believe that Jews have as much right as any other people to join together for the purposes of self defense. It does not follow from this (as you rather smugly assert) that I enjoy reading racist claptrap that happens to approve of Jews. Racist nonsense that approves of me today can just as easily morph into racist nonsense that attacks me tomorrow; it’s all equally detached from reality.
2) Nor does it follow that I approve of the wrong-headed, racist claptrap spewed by the right wing of the Israeli political spectrum. As an American, I’m proud to belong to that substantial majority of Jews who a) vote Democratic, b) believed from the beginning that this administration’s Iraq adventure would be disastrous, and c) firmly believe in the justice of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
States are formed by communities in need of security. This certainly defines the experience of the Jews who came together to form the state of Israel. The Jews of the twentieth century were forced to the awareness that only a sovereign state of their own could hope to secure their lives and freedoms against those who wished them ill (NB: I do not say such a state can *guarantee* security — only that its absence guarantees insecurity). Nothing I see in the current world political situation — and certainly nothing that has been posted in this thread — persuades me that the need for an armed Jewish state is any less pressing now than it was sixy years ago.

GR, I don’t think I suggested that Jews didn’t have a right to collective security or to a State.
Yes my assumption and assertion that you might enjoy W.C description of Jews was smug and I gladly withdraw it.
Whether the Jewish people are more protected with the existence of Israel is a fascinating concept, particularly *now*, and *not only* for the Jewish people. For those who plan on being in a better place after death, they will enjoy an interesting discussion. If the present level of madness continues we my not be as adept or as lucky as in 1962. Unfortunately I don’t see myself in an after life debate. Unless we get beyond the need for Nation States none of us will ever have a *guarantee* of security regardless of ethnicity or geographic location.

GR, a question for clarification because I can’t tell for sure which side of the wall you’re on: To your mind, does “self-defense” include the concept of retaliatory violence to punish suicide bombings? Because, as you know, it does to many who use the terms “armed state,” “security,” “preservation,” and “self-defense” when referring to Israel. Those people believe that inflicting “targeted” violence (in the name of self-defense) achieves the goal of a people to “live free from the threat of random bombings as anyone else.” After decades of near-relentless bloodshed, I’ll step up to say I don’t see this armed-state-as-self-defense argument making impressive progress. After all this time, in fact, I don’t see many (any?) gains in the area of “security” *or* a lessening of “insecurity.” You don’t have to comment, but I noticed you avoided addressing it. It is an issue that needs to be addressed and never is.
I also noticed you use the term “state” when you really mean “armed state.” There’s a difference.
Finally, I’m curious which people you are referring to who “live free from the threat of random bombings.” Wherever those people live, I’d like to move there.

Responses to jt and readytoblowagasket:
jt: you may well be right that a political evolution beyond the concept of the Nation State would be a major — even necessary — step forward in the progress toward a peaceful future. I’m not sure what steps would get us on that evolutionary path — and I have to say, I don’t really see much progress in this direction as likely to take place in my lifetime. I’m afraid I fall in with James Madison on this issue: governments are necessary to ameliorate the effects spawned of the difference that obtains between men and angels. Least of all do I think it would be salutary for Israeli Jews to be the first to commit themselves to a unilateral experiment on the abolition of Nation States.
To rtbag: First, you’re wrong to imply that I’ve drawn some kind of false distinction betwen “state” and “armed state.” See my post to this thread, 24 Apr, 10:38 am. Second, to your question about armed retaliation to suicide bombings: Yes, I believe the right to self-defense includes this option. No, I don’t believe it *necessitates* the exercise of the option. (I note that no one in this thread has commented on Ehud Olmert’s explicit decision *not* to retaliate for the most recent attack.) Actually, I do believe there exists a practical means of reducing the threat of suicide bombings in Israel: the security fence now under construction. Something like this ought to have been undertaken years ago, but the “Greater Israel” ideologues and the business interests wanting easy access to cheap Palestinian labor were able to prevent it. I also think the unilateral withdrawals and programs to dismantle settlements are a good thing, and hope they will be continued and enforced with diligence.
You may be right that the armed state of Israel is at best an imperfect solution to the perennial problem of protecting the right of Jews to live in freedom and safety. I note, however, that you do not address the historical circumstances that drove toward this solution, nor do you offer any alternatives. Seen from the long view, the Jew-bashing rants of Ahmadinejad belong to a vital tradition that shows no sign of abating; we know what unarmed Jews experienced at the hands of this tradition.
Nothing persuades me of the continuing need for an armed Jewish state quite so much as the readiness of people of good will to villify that state. Someone in this thread went so far as to accuse Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians — a demonstrably laughable claim, insofar as Palestinian population growth has been steady for the last several decades. (By contrast, between 1939 and 1949 the 3,000,000 strong Jewish community of Poland was reduced by 97 (yes, ninety-seven) percent.) Populations experiencing genocide do not grow. Yet no one in this thread — a discussion dominated by people whose political views (Israel excepted) are almost entirely similar to my own — saw fit to challenge that claim. This is the sort of thing that leads me to conclude that if Jews do not defend their own interests, they cannot reasonably rely on others to do it for them, which leads me to conclude that Jewish survival will continue to depend for some time to come on the willingness of Jews to take up arms and, yes, to use them.
I work in an academic environment. As I’m sure many of you are aware, Israel has become the international villain de jour for the left activism communities in academia. Given my broader political views, the sense of exclusion this villification inspires in me is deeply saddening. Not so saddening, however, as to lead me to endorse policies which, given what I know of Jewish history, I cannot help but believe would amount to group suicide.

Why do we NOT know HER name? Why is it that most of us never even heard about HER death? (Rhetorical questions, of course, because it’s clear that Palestinian deaths just don’t count and often don’t even get reported.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4963598.stm
Mourning a West Bank wife
By Matthew Price
BBC News, Tulkarm
In a small room on the edge of Tulkarm, they are wailing for 44-year-old Eitas Zalat.
There are tears, screams, and whimpers. Women turn to me in sorrow, and in anger.
Eitas Zalat was a mother of five. She was killed at dawn by an Israeli army bullet while sitting in her living room…

ummabdulla, on CBC we were shown the destructive consequence and “collateral damage” inflicted on this families home, how many times does one have to hear the word *sorry* from the IDF before it become totally irrelevant ?
GR’s concerns I suspect have really been tweaked by a recent academic publication which Robert Fisk outlines in his excellent article of 27 April 2006.
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk04272006.html
In addition Juan Cole is circulation a petition to support academic freedom in the ‘Land of the Free’, with regards to the scholars mentioned in Fisk’s article.
One NY theatre was willing to stage the play Rachel Corrie but required more time “to prepare their audience”? we didn’t do much better in Canada as intimidation and fear have found their way into one of our leading universities.
http://www.rachelswords.org/ Story of activist killed in Gaza,
U of T reading by invitation only.
Are we getting closer to “freedom of expression” by invitation only.