[Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
> like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
> differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
> around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
> campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
> see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

(To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)

Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think
it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my
opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more
attractive than most others I can think of right now.

However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do
with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a
thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of
murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot
more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in
all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was
frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may
not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure
killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. Jews in WWII
Germany were so absolutely and utterly powerless that they literally had
*no possible way* to instigate any kind of significant retaliation,
violent or otherwise, against their oppressors; had it been possible,
i'm sure they would have done. And again there were no suicide bombings
(as far as i'm aware, anyway) in the Indian struggle for independence,
but there was certainly a hell of a lot of murder. Hindis killed
Muslims, Muslims killed Hindis, Hindis and Muslims both killed English,
and the English killed everyone else. A hell of a lot more people died
during Partition than have died (or probably ever will) during the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Suicide bombing is undeniably nasty, and has a strong impact on the
Western psyche because it's completely foreign to it, but in the final
analysis, someone who's been murdered is just as dead no matter how it
happened. So I don't think focussing on the method is particularly
profitable. Suicide bombing is one of very few effective strategies of
murder available to Palestinians inclined to it, and one that their
particular ideology supports, therefore it gets used; I don't see
anything intrinsically *more* evil about it than, say, just getting a
bunch of explosive and blowing the hell out of somewhere, a
time-honoured tactic of all sides in all armed conflicts since the
invention of explosives...in the end, it's just a different method of
transport.

My $0.02. I hope this isn't too inflammatory, if you consider it so and
want to respond, please do so off-list to keep the temperature down...I
also hope it maybe has something of use to these particular articles,
but I'm probably wrong. :)
-- 
adamw