Roger L. Simon: The Wrong Button

My friend Allyson Taylor sent me the sad photographs below with the following accompanying note: Here is the series of photographs taken by the security camera at the crossing from Gaza recording the attempt of last week's homocide bomber to explode herself. They go from right to left (this is Israel). She arrives in traditional dress. Disrobes and searches for the button. Attempts to detonate and realizes she's still alive and in trouble.

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She's probably crying because it's a grave sin for the women in her group to disrobe in public without blowing themselves (and as many jews as possible) into little bloody pieces. Now her brother is going to have to stone her to death, or something....

I don't see what's particularly sad about this, unless you're referring to her desire to blow up other people. I'd deem that at best pathetic, and at worst repulsive.

I'd say that the fact of her not blowing herself up is relatively -- one takes into account her intentions -- joyous.

Deep down, I guess I'm still a bleeding heart. That sequence of photos moved me to tears. I just can't imagine what that must be like. I mean, I understand suicidal despair, but to be so consumed by hatred that you're driven to indiscriminate mass murder? I just can't wrap my head around that.

Thanks for posting this, Roger. I think it's important that we remember that terrorists are people, even while we dedicate ourselves with unblinking resolve to eradicating them from the face of the Earth.

This has to be judged in the light of her culture,it is not despair that drives them it is fulfilment,to them death is just the process of moving on to a better place.What is sad is that they believe that the life they have been given is inconsequential.

The sad part is that there will be people who believe that the explosives were "snuck" into her underwear without her knowledge.

Exactly right. We have to remember that they are not animals striking out blindly from instinct but have the same ability to discern right from wrong, to reason and evaluate the consequences of their actions as the rest of us do. Yet they choose, of their own free will, to commit heinous and despicable acts. This is why it is not sufficient to merely eradicate individual terrorists but that drastic reform of the societies that foster the hatred that drives terrorists is also necessary.

And every now and then I find myself believing moderates exist. (I think, for example, of the brave dentists of "Iraq the Model.")

Our current strategy, of course, implicitly depends on their existence. One of the curious things about the left's incessant ranting about Bush is that they cannot possibly give him credit for a much more humane, compassionate and generous view of the true nature of Islam than they (the left) hold themselves.

The left, on the other hand, has maneuvered itself into a position where it is necessary to celebrate misogynist Muslim beheaders as somehow the moral equivalent of Minutemen.

This is indeed sad. It is not the attempted act, or the political circumstances that makes me want to puke. What is sad is that this poor woman was brain washed into believing that her life would serve a better purpose like this, than living it to the end. What is revolting is that he leadership, cowards, are able to talk others into doing their dirty bidding.

It is disgusting to see young palestinians, their whole life ahead of them being convinced, by men full of nothing but hatred yet with no courage to carry out the acts themselves, to end their own lives.

Does anyone happen to know the Islamic position on women and their afterlife following 'martyrdom'? Does it also involve some 70 virgins?

Not to make light of what truly is a sad and frightening situation, but I think that whole 72 virgins thing is overrated:

We can quibble about the definition of moderate Muslim, but it seems pretty clear that most of them are not jihadis. If that were the case our ten thousand troops in Afghanistan would not last a week. Nothern Iraq, with it's Kurdish Muslim population, would be as violent as the Sunni portions of the country.

This may yet escalate into an all-out war of civilisations, but I get the feeling that too many people of the LGF persuasion are activily working for such an outcome.

We can quibble about the definition of moderate Muslim, but it seems pretty clear that most of them are not jihadis...

I respect your point, but I'm not thinking that most Muslims are jihadis; I'm worried about what proportion of Muslims are sympathetic to, and potentially enabling of, the extremists.

And I get what you mean by "of the LGF persuasion," but I think you're being unfair to Charles Johnson who is, in my book, a hero, and to the majority of posters there.

Something about the expression on the face of this unfortunate woman makes me wonder whether she is one of those who have been forced to carry out, or attempt to carry out, such a mission because of some "dishonor" she has (allegedly) brought on her family.

Jamie, I see the situation in the Middle East as being analogous to the Old South. You had an active and violent minority with a great deal of power since they were ready and willing to commit violence at the slightest provication. There was a pretty large group of KKK sympathizers who probably celebrated and endorsed the violence but themselves wouldn't have committed any. Imo this group is probably pretty big but also includes a lot of people who could be swayed if a vocal number of people began to oppose the violence of the KKK-like groups. Then, there are people who are just too terrified to say anything against these groups because of the threat to their lives. I don't know how many these people are. Could be a 1/3? Could be only 5%? I pray and hope 1/3 is closer. The people who do say something end up at the end of a noose or flee. These are the people who need to be protected and encouraged.

But I do intend to make light of the situation--it's quite funny that we all think they're serious religious people giving their lives to god when the truth is they're just horny teenagers trying to get laid.

What is sad is that there is not a fifth frame showing this filthy piece of garbage taking an Israeli bullet to the head. Enough of this PC bullshit. Islam has always been a murderous cult, there is 1400+ years of evidence, just ask the Medinans, Zoroastrians, etc...

The fabled moderate Muslim does not exist. There are only two groups within Islam. One is comprised of the clerics and those who honor them, the other are their captives. The captives are undoubtedly the majority, however, their failure to rise against their vile masters, to submit for hundreds of years makes them unworthy of compassion in my eyes. To hell with the lot...

All this talk that moderate Muslims must come out against jihad is a smoke-screen to allow bigots to direct their ire against an entire religion.

During The Troubles, I don't remember a call for all Catholics to come out against the IRA or else be accused of implicitly supporting their actions; Buddhists are not currently are on the hook for the actions of the Tamil Tigers.

The reason is that most normal people assume that civilized peoples everywhere abhor the targeting of civilians; there is no need for them to explicitly come out against the obvious.

The fact that there are moderate Muslims is beside the point. Muslims who live in America who do not support the terrorists and who practice their faith in accordance to the limitations that all religions are under in this country will be fine. The canard that if you attempt to kill the Islamo-Fascist who openly declare that they will kill you, or if you call suicide bombers and the leaders who send them out to kill women and children with no milatary target involved thugs and killers,if somehow this makes you anti- Muslim then they are claiming these people as there own. This logic means that those sub-human actions are part of their religion.

Christians commit horrirfic sins everyday. If the abortion clinic bombers are caught and someone calls them terrorists and murderers I am not going to accuse that person of being anti-christian. I am going to say you got it right bud and I hope they receive the ultimate punishment for their crime. I feel sorry for this women only in the sense that she is like me, a human who falls short of the glory of God. I also know that without my relationship with God there is no level to low for me to go. But understanding all that does not require me to remove all human responsibility in any discussion of her acts. If I judge her to raise myself up I am wrong. If I don't point out that her actions are evil then I am just as wrong.

Jamie: As I understand it, the original impulse was not even political. Israeli doctors treated her for burns she acquired in an accident. That's why she got a pass to re-enter Israel. This time, though, she came loaded with bombs. Apparently, she's despondent about her disfigurement. But it's a hell of a way to repay the kindness of the doctors who treated her. The situation is wretched and sad from so many angles.... It boils down to fundamental values.

Pravda:
"The bigot, on the other hand, assumes a Muslim, by definition, is uncivilized."

It is the Left who apparently think democracy can only be successful for Europeans and their descendents.

It is the Left who, on hearing the phrase "Muslim terrorist," hear only "Muslim" and do not credit the speaker with making a distinction.

During The Troubles, I don't remember a call for all Catholics to come out against the IRA or else be accused of implicitly supporting their actions...

A brilliant and very sweet Irish fellow did the granite work in my house, and I got to know him quite well. He had years of direct personal experience with "The Troubles." He despised the IRA, whom he called "a Mafia." He had seen them shake down workers leaving their jobs on payday. Everyone knew you didn't "call for all Catholics to come out against the IRA," unless you were suicidal.

That's what I'd figured when I first read the story, and was surprised to see when Haaretz had a picture of her that her face looks completely untouched. Looking at these pictures, do you see any burns at all?

the following is a slightly off-topic observation:
lastweek i went trolling, among more or less moderate left sites - in an attempt to understand better the differences that separate left/right on so many issues [it was a vain attempt]. i found little evidence of a deep level of thought, as is apparent in numerous comments here. thank you for the above responses. sure, they are ideological, they reveal a bias toward conservatism. but they are not uniform in the positions held and in there logic. and many of the comments above show a complex ability to feel compassion and empathy for the plight of the Palestinians, all while maintaining a contempt and rejection of their methods. there is hope, because i know there are counterparts on the left to the above commenters. they just need to step up and be heard.

Your statement that all civilzed societies abhor the targeting of civilians has one problem. For the last 6 years the UN has been trying to pass a resolution that would say exactly what you say all societies want. In their definition of terrorism bombers who attack milatary targets would be exempt. They have narrowed it down to bombers that strictly target civilians with no milatary value. Under this definition the bombing of the "Cole" would be allowed. Since you claim all civilized societies agree on this point of course the UN would have no problem passing this resolution right? Wrong. Who is blocking it. The arab bloc anlong with some far left countries such as Cuba.Please explain this point that makes your statement absurd.

The Catholic Church did condemn the civillian targeting during the Troubles. After a ridiculouse slow start the US began arresting and prosecuting the Irish in America who were funneling cash to the IRA. name me the major Catholic Country that financed the IRA. name me the Pope who rationalized the more brutal proponents of the IRA and called them martyrs and hailed them as Catholic heroes.point to the theological justification that was written by the Catholic Church to give religous comfort to the IRA thugs who targeted children instead of soldiers. Did Italy or Poland fund the IRA? In fact when the money out of Boston and New York ran dry where did the IRA turn to? Libya, what a shock! I know that millions of Muslims are sickened by this behaviour. I also know that millions support it and that many "Muslim" governments aid and abet it. And many major Mulim religous leaders rationalize it.

Instead of doing your traditional habit of depositing your vomit and then never responding please have the intellectual courage to answer questions and defend your position. You still have answered none of the challenges on the Fallaci thread. You are either not equiped to deal or you are a coward.

These pictures do make me sad, even though they show someone trying to kill other people.

The Truth must never read those who respond to her. I have never once read a rejoinder from her.

I'd like to know why a criminal's race bears on that criminal's crime. Courts (ideally) recognize circumstances, but only in sentencing. Are victims more/less victimized by a crime depending on the criminal's motives, resume, origin, religion, etcetera?

And if not, then why on earth do some people continue to make such anti-civilization and psychologically corrosive assertions?

This woman is obviously not a jihadist; from her dress and makeup it's clear she's a secularist.

It's not Islam that drives her to slaughter innocents but the logic of a pathological political culture, a culture that most Palestinians share with a very large number of their arab brethren in Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Syria and other countries. It is a politics of frenzy, of paranoia and victimization, of psychological obsession and ideological primitivism.

We discovered much later that the second female Palestinian suicide bomber had not been on a mission of her own design. Rather it had been a scheme hatched by her husband and lover to restore "honor" following her extra-marital affair (I'll know Islam has advanced when they start killing and maiming men in the name of honor). I wonder if this woman has a similar backstory.

Jamie, I see you and I are on the same track (well, you know, great minds and all...). Amen, Mike C.

It captures so much of what the left's debasement of language is doing to our public discourse. (In saying this I do not mean to let the right off the hook; don't misunderstand me.)

It is "psychologically corrosive," for example, to have one's every attempt at reasoned argument labelled "bigoted" or "racist."

It is "psychologically corrosive" to have every sign of progress swept under the rug, and every setback magnified to gigantic proportions.

And unfortunately it is "psychologically corrosive" à la puissance treizième to assume that misogynist, sadistic, and ignorant thugs are going to spare you because you are so gentle and understanding of their "plight."

It is a politics of frenzy, of paranoia and victimization, of psychological obsession and ideological primitivism...

I'll echo our friend Rick Ballard here and say you're being (almost) too hard on the Democratic National Committee.

Jamie, I see you and I are on the same track (well, you know, great minds and all...).

Kyda, you magnificent -- No, I'll stop now. I promised I wouldn't beat it to death.

I've often wondered. Do they really think they will be spared, deep down? Shades of the grade school playground. If I stay away from the bully, he will stay away from me. It may work once in a great while.

BTW, the accent grave over your "e" in "treizieme" appeared as a very authentic looking kanjiesque character when pasted in my Preview, making me think of our Japanese contingent. Given the cosmopolitan nature of our little crowd, we will have to straighten that stuff out . . .

Buddy "Truth" used to post at the Command Post using a technique similar to Double Standard.I got the impression that it was female and perhaps a muslim.

What strikes me is that, when the IRA butchered a child in a bomb atrocity there was universal condemnation and bewilderment,
In Palestine a child has a bomb strapped to it and is sent to kill itself and as many others as it can.
This is greeted by celebrations.

It's nice to be able to sit here and oil 'One Blow' while others engage in appropriate maceration.

Thanks, Peter, I'm not the only one picking up the identity cues--I guess you're Sherlock. I don't mind being Dr. Watson as long as you don't start conversations with "Elementary". :-)

Jamie, corrosion is a good word, by 5 or 6 yrs you 'get' right vs wrong, in the truest way (cause/effect, stimulus/response), then you spend a lifetime complicating it on the notion that the more complex, the more refined.

Soon enough you can reduce the greatest force in your human nature to a frankly absurd "?". Feh. The gain in volume is at the loss of weight.

It would be a good thing to know that girl's story--to know how she got her mind to the point we see in the pictures.

To explain to her how the refugee industry in the UN and Europe has pillaged her people, how sans Arafat and the Armani gangsters, Israel as a business partner could've--would've--had her living a productive life building a proud and self sufficient nation, rather than standing there in the dust in extremis.

Any chance the story and act is just to help her save face? Maybe she never wanted to detonate.

Thats, still a wee bit condescending to us overly-sensitive colonists, Mr. UK.
Didn't like to use the royal "we" Eh Buddy?

Hogarth thinks that whole 72 virgins thing is overrated. I'd take it further than this. The whole virgins thing is overrated. Experience, particularly experience within an established relationship, beats innocence all hollow. I just wish there was somee way to convince the would-be martyrs of this.

But virgins would appeal to someone worried about standards of performance. I mean, i heard someone say that one time.

This woman told an interviewer on Israeli TV:
"My dream was to be a martyr," she said. "I believe in death."
AND
"Don't think that because of how I look I wanted to carry out an attack. ... Since I was a little girl I wanted to carry out an attack."
This is the outcome when a devalued person (her burns leave her unlikely to marry and produce more Palestinian fighters) sees suicide bombing as the height of celebrity in their culture.
The quotes are from an article in Ha'aretz; there is a lot more there. I wrote about the psychological underpinnings of this behavior on my blog yesterday & today, in some detail. In brief:
"I suggested that her culture, by glorifying the suicide bomber had created a situation in which young people with less than the usual self esteem could easily adopt the identity as an idealized suicide bomber as a way to enhance their sense of themselves as a valuable member of society."
The suicide bomber represents the intersection of a disturbed culture with an individual's disturbed narcissism.

The suicide bomber represents the intersection of a disturbed culture with an individual's disturbed narcissism.

This woman told an interviewer on Israeli TV:
"My dream was to be a martyr," she said. "I believe in death."

Compare the above with her European fascist predecessors' rallying cry: "Viva el Muerte!"

Folks, this isn't about Islam per se; what we're facing is an opportunistic death cult that uses the tropes and organizational advantages of Islam to pursue its nihilistic vision.

Oddly enough, one of the reasons for the sympathy they engender among so many continental Europeans is that culture's own (milder) version of a death cult. Witness the appallingly high suicide rate in France and Switzerland, the refusal by increasing numbers of Europeans to bear and raise children, the unwillingness to inconvenience oneself to spare the elderly a death by suffocation or heatstroke. Also, a similar unwillingness among middle-aged workers to allow greater competition so that Europe's army of young unemployed workers might have a shot at gainful employment.

Otter:
She was featured on the evening news this week. Her neck is severely burned leading me to wonder if her torso isn't affected.

Shrinkwrapped has something. She's disfigured and damaged goods. As a woman in that culture, she may have to do something to redeem herself. I doubt it's an old idea. Her mother was in hysterics over it.

The difference between the right and left is pretty easy to suss out. The Left wants to give you a fish so you won't be hungry today (socialism). The Right wants to teach you how to fish so you won't be hungry today, or for the rest of your life (free enterprise). A whole shit-load of ideas devolve from that one basic premise. For example, it determines what types of govenments you support and what you'd be prepared to do to protect them. Both sidea are often struggling for the same result--the betterment of humankind--but by different means...

The main reasons Europeans are "refusing to bear and raise children" are:-
Economic,Housing costs are horrendous,with a greater expectancy of a better life,people are finding that both parents have to work.The tax regime in the UK militates against married coouples.Children are a financial burden for longer as further education extends later into life.Some are now thirty and still not earning a living.Parents can be in their sixties by the time the chick leaves the nest.
The wellfare state removes the need to have children to provide for old age.Many couples sell the family home and buy a smaller house when the children leave.
Many have bought houses close to good schools,these houses are at a premium,with astronomical council taxes.

Children interfere with peoples social lives,in fact a significant other also seems to be on the decline as more people live alone.
Contraception and abortion are freely available and women are choosing to bear children later in life which makes having more than two children impossible in the time available.

A large number of women have professional jobs ,many of which involve long commuting times, making child care difficult.

Many women simply do not want the physical problems involved in bearing a large family.
There is no incentive for the educated classes to have families,The government believes that the supply of "helots" to do the menial tasks is endless,they are probably right,but it is dawning slowly upon the Government that the productive middle classes,which incidentally bore the brunt of taxation,have opted out of the procreation busines.

...and on Day Two, when they have no fish, the word "hunger" will banned, and on Day Three, when the starving gets unruly, they'll be told that the neighbors are jerks so go take their fish, and on Day Four when the neighbors are killed off, hmm, oops, never got to that point, the neighbors so far have been able to protect their fish.

But, don't teach the people how to fish, they'll get too independent, and won't need to be "saved".

Another thing, Peter, is that socialism so freezes growth and dynamism, and so deflates optimism about a better future--or even a decent future--that I'm sure many little never-borns are being done a favor in the minds of the might-have-been parents.

And another thing, pop-culture is so vicious to the young that the prospect of responsibility for their decent upbringing is daunting in the extreme.

Really--the world has conducted a hundred-year experiment in answering the question of which system--left or right--works in the name of humanity, and the results are in. But the monster refuses to yield.

Buddy, ah, but if you're an AMERICAN progressive, you can declare the neighbors' fish subject to eminent domain and confiscate them.

And Roger? Whenever I log on through the password site it flashes a warning that I am being transferred to a site that is not secure.

If you are aprogressive,you have people who do that kind of thing for you,all you have to do is eat it or send it back to the kitchen.

Buddy,they all get one at the passing out ceremony at spy school.Helps them to be more inconspicuous.

Until I can burn the Koran and the Bible as "equal opportunity" books, I will not consider Islam and Christianity on equal footing.

Take a look at one of Google's new indexees (be sure and click thru to the actual site).

Thibaud is also "on the money" about the profound selfishness of the European attitude about the world around them. They'd rather see great swaths of Africa starve than to allow competition with their farmers. It really is sad.

June 24, 2005: The Wrong Button

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