Note that Ayatollah Khomeini, who spent his whole life urging children to die for Allah, died peacefully of old age in his bed.

I'll believe it's martyrdom when those who preach martyrdom martyr themselves.

Well said Martin.

That is why I am proudly a "logocentrist"

It amuses and horrifies me by turns when people attempt to argue over the evils of logic as a tool of the patriarchy.

The same people urging multiculturalism upon us themselves tend to look at suicide-bombing as proof of how oppressed and disenfranchised these Moslems are. Why do they believe it is evidence of this? Because they, like most of the western world, are so tacken aback by the concept of suicide as a method of murder. But if one looks at suicide-bombings through the prism of Islamic culture, it is a perfectly natural form of expression. Suicide bombers come from a culture in which the individual is despised, and so, it is really nothing to commit suicide for the sake of the group, or one's own sense of 'honor'.
The few cases of this kind of thing in the west- Masada springs to mind- generally ocurr as a last ditch defence or in the form of allowing oneself to be killed rather than convert etc. But using suicide as an offensive weapon, esp. against civilians, is alien to western thinking.

Your comment about there being no such thing as Palestinians is standard Zionist propaganda. When Israel occupied its land in '48 it ran 700,000 Arabs living in Palestine off. They weren't "Palestinians" but they lived there and had roots that are far more substantial than Jewish claims to the land (the last 1300 years vs. 80 or so years over 2000 yrs ago under David and Salomon). Also, the claims that the land was abandoned and unused aren't true - according to Israeli historians, not the tired Mark Twain quote upon which this lie is based (Twain also despised Jews, so you may want to take his statements with a grain of salt).

As for child martyrs, why don't you stop and ask yourself why a population would go to such extremes? How desperate would they have to be to blow up themselves and their children? Could the fact that their land was stolen and that they've been living in exile for 60 years while being attacked, tortured, kidnapped, killed and forced to live in deprivation (all fact that Israeli officials and historians have acknowledged) have something to do with it? Does the injustices that they have suffered matter at all to you?

The analysis and the reason put forward by Amy Alkon is most logical.
But the analysis put forward by Glenn is most illogical. The fact is palestinians are islamic people who are trying to further their islamic totalitarian agenda in a brutal way. The fact is that too many islamic groups/organisations/goverment that had oppressed minority non-moslems had gone unreported. I as a minority NON-moslem had also been discriminated badly and mistreated badly by islamic people but that did not make me fight back in a brutal way.
My analysis is that those islamic palestinians were not driven by desperation. I think those islamic palestinians were driven by extreme greed and extreme violence in their tribal islamic culture.

What about those islamic people who had been living in other people Non-islamic land and were given so many benefits and privileges without violence thrown at them? The problem with islamic people is they want to have it all and when they can't have it all, they try violence, intimidation, corruption, subtle pressure, etc. That is why i DON'T like islamic people. their islamic way of life is just so depressing and so foul. Their islamic culture is in reality is very unpleasant, very backward and very damaging to my life and myself as a modern, forward thinking Atheist/Nonbeliever person..

Glenn you are an idiot.

The land belonged to the brith, you want to argue the morality of colonialzation bring it up as a seperate subject - what should have been dont mena shit in this life.

THey spit the land up and gave Jews the smallest portion. They built something out of it.

Palistine has been offered peace every time they have surrendered after attacking Isreal. I'll admit while in high school I was part of the Isreal is mean club.

I saw them gave back miles of land, with infrastructure buildings and industy - and I watched incomprehensibly as it was swarmed over and destroyed by the very people who had demanded it.

Tell me something. How in the hell is Isreal supposed to react when the duly elected governemnt of Gaza has a stated goal of destroying the nation of Isreal?

I tell you what, palisinians are damn lucky I'm not in charge bacause the next time they fired a rocket I would level every structure between the border and the sea and cut off all aid and sink any ship approching the blockade.

Ever look at the history of Islam Glenn? They havent created a single thing. No great works of art, nothing was added in the way of social development, nothing in the way of science or architecture that wasnt stolen from an nehiboring culture.

Islam is the intelectual, scientific, and artistic equivielent of a plauge. Every where is spreads advancement comes to a screeching halt

What about all the injustices and alienation that the islamic people inflicted on me, as a minority nonbeliever, living uneasily without equal rights in their islamic ruled country?

Amy is overly generous when she refers to what Glenn says as "Twaddle".

Glenn... booo hooo hooo for those poor oppressed Arabs. They don't have any choice and self-determination. They're hand is forced into brainwashing children to hate and be willing to die in the pursuit of that hate.

I don't remember who was actually in that land first, but weren't the Jews there before the Romans, who were there before the Persians, right before the Muslims took over, but before the Christians ran the joint, until the Turks yanked it away from them, and.... Oh... can't we just give the land to the Canaanites! They were there first!

Why do you think that Muslims reject prosperity and progress (those "evil" western ways). Because maybe once they got a hold of those things, they would have less to be angry about? What if girls had rights in those nations? What if they could become educated? What if boys could pursue playing in a rock band? What if people could aspire to creating things of value to share with the world? Nah...

Be real... who's the oppressor in the Muslim world. It's the Mullahs and the Ayatollahs. If those societies were to open up and modernize, and if reason, respect, cooperation, and prosperity flourished, then... poof... there goes your hope for a Caliphate.

When you're busy working at your high-tech business, winery, farm, manufacturing company, web-development firm, or construction company, pfff... who has the energy left at the end of the day for a bunch of jihad and cutting of heads of infidels.

And I wouldn't want my kids blowing themselves up. I need them to help mow the lawn, wash the SUV, and clean the swimming pool.

OK, I vote to put lujlp in charge:

"I tell you what, [Palestinians] are damn lucky I'm not in charge [because] the next time they fired a rocket I would level every structure between the border and the sea and cut off all aid and sink any ship [approaching] the blockade."

I'm a big fan of disproportionate responses when it comes to dealing with the kind of shit that the Palestinians dish out.

My above question is posed specifically to Glenn.
And another question is : Does the injustices that I am having to suffer quietly matter at all to anyone? The answer is no and that I am having to suffer quietly and peacefully without resorting to any violence or brutal solution.

I tell you what mark the world would be a wonderful place if I ran things

Glenn:
When Israel occupied its land in '48 it ran 700,000 Arabs living in Palestine off. They weren't "Palestinians" but they lived there and had roots that are far more substantial than Jewish claims to the land
- - - - - - - - - - -
1) The vast majority of the Arab residents of British-mandate Palestine were migrant workers and tenant farmers - drawn to Palestine by jobs the Brits and Jews created through industry and investment.

Most were 1st-generation "Palestinians". The most common last name in Gaza to this day is "Al-Masri" which means "The Egyptian"

2) So-called "Palestinians" from Gaza, the West Bank, and the Galilee all speak different dialects of Arabic, and belong to different clans. Speaking of which:

3) Jordan was created with a stroke of a British pen. It is the "Palestinian State" - 70 percent of the population are ethnic Palis indistinguishable from West-Bank Arabs.

Incredibly, the final partition plan for "Palestine" created ANOTHER "Palestinian" state west of the Jordan river - leaving the Jews a virtually indefensible sliver of coastal land. Before the invention of the Palestinian people as a wedge against Israel, Jordan "occupied" the West Bank for 20 years and nobody said boo.

So the legitimate national aspirations of the Arabs of "Palestine" have been met twice over.

3) I'll match your 700,000 "refugees" - who simply moved from one area to another with the same ethnic makeup - with the millions of Jews who were expelled from Arab lands and absorbed by Israel.

Many millions more were displaced in the paritioning of Cyprus and along the India/Pakistan border. Only the Palis are granted perpetual victimhood and a bottomless coffee cup of grievance.

They are in their current position due to intransigence and continued pursuit of war.

Ben-David's history is accurate; unfortunately, it is pretty irrelevant. We have the situation we have today: the Palestinians exist, they are miserable, and they are being cynically used by the surrounding Arab states to keep pressure on Israel.

Example: Egypt recently oh-so-generously opened its border to allow Palestinians access to services in Egypt. This is hailed by the clueless western press as a wonderful thing.

Why does no one ask the obvious question "why isn't the Egyption border always open?"

Answer: because the Palestinians would no longer be miserable - frankly, most of them would probably leave - and the pressure on Israel would be gone.

You may want to check out the clip from Saudi TV:

Saudi Official: "Terrorism Is the Product of a Flaw in Arab and Muslim Culture "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iItULYTCabE

Why are these fuckers always hit and runners?

Why the fuck do they even bother to comment if they wont stay to defend their arguments?

lujlp, because much like the "Palestinians", they don't have a legitimate argument. They are merely trolls that want to gin up some sympathy by whining like babies who think they are entitled to something which they are not.

They don't want to (nor can they) defend their idiotic positions. And because of that, it's evidence that they really aren't looking for any kind of legitimate solutions or compromises (which history has already taught us this about them).