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Don't Join the Brain Wash Queue

August 14, 2006

There isn’t much worth reading in the news - everything is about two abused kids fighting it out. No ones should be surprised by what they are doing to each others.

We must, however, be very careful in not following the brain wash queue: from the softy softy racism in making reference to British Muslims rather than simply British to the political slang such as ‘terrorists’, ‘eliminating terrorist’s strongholds’, ‘operations’, ‘targets’ and ‘a state within a state’ which merely aim to decriminalize the violence, depersonalize the killings and illegitimize a political entity whom tens of thousands of people have voted for. When Israeli soldiers are captured, it is a kidnap. When 9,400 Palestinians are captured (including children and women), they are simply locked up, indefinitely.

Blowing up an airplane in mid-air is certainly a terrorist act. The same is also true to ‘precisely’ bomb a building just because there is a couple of terrorist suspects hiding among several dozens of innocent civilians there. The only difference is that the suicide bombers who blow up the airplane are not cowards but whether the same can be said about the pilot who pulls the trigger from 3000 miles above the building is not sure.

We are lucky enough to be able to watch this war from the outside but before we demonize someone as terrorists as a prelude to mass murder, let’s make sure we understand the definition of terrorist. As Ian William wrote in ‘The Semantics of Terror’, Nelson Mandela, Michael Collins, Archbishop Makarios, Menachim Begin, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Shamir, Eamon DeValera and Jomo Kenyatta have all been called terrorists. And if we are not careful, just about anyone from Chechnya to Xinjiang, from Uzbekistan to Gaza, Abu Ghraib to south Lebanon, will be posthumous terrorists as soon as their killing is reported.

Wiping off a nation from the world map requires a fanatical worldview whether it is about Israel or Palestine.

One begins to wonder who really is more a terrorist after reading some fundamental statistics about causalty counts from UPI.

Lebanese dead total at least 642, of whom 558 are civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers who, at least officially, are not in the fight and only 55 Hezbollah fighters. This is about 10 civilians to 1 soldier.

As for Israel, among the 97 reported dead, 61 are soldiers and only 36 civilians. This is about 1 civilian to 2 soldiers.

Posted to General at August 14, 2006 12:58 AM :    Furl It!    del.icio.us

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