At least 10 Israelis have been killed when a suicide bomber attacked a bus in Jerusalem early this morning.
The blast, which occurred at about 8:51 a.m. local time on bus No. 19, peeled the roof back like a tin can and catapulted passengers through the windows and down the street. Body parts could be found strewn along the rooftops of buildings.
There is no excuse for suicide bombing. There is no excuse for sending a woman packed with explosives and shrapnel on a mission to kill as many innocents as she can. There is no excuse for such abject and total inhumanity. None.
The Palestinians have embraced violence, and no people who cannot even accept the humanity of their neighbors deserves a state, recognition, or sympathy.
The IDF will have a busy day today, and I hope they bag those responsible and send them straight to hell.
I couldn’t agree more. Not even in their worst days were the PIRA as bad as the various Palestinian groups for total disregard for humanity.
Only Al Qaeda, to my mind, is worse, and only in terms of numerics.
Swiftly approaches the time wherein the world will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, when, finally, the Israelis decide that enough is enough, and begin a purge the likes of which these bastards won’t be able to repulse.
Me too, I totally agree:
“there can be no excuse for the people who cannot even accept the humanity of their neighbors”.
this is true for both extremist sides of this conflict. All killers deserve hell. The sad thing is that both peaceful palestinians and peaceful israelis are paying the price of a war only because of a few nationalist and racist assholes on both sides…I hope the IDF will spare the lives of innocent palestinians while looking for bombers hidden among them. Otherwise, their death would be just as horrible as the murdering of innocent israeli civilians killed in terrorist attacks, and would only help perpetuate this conflict. The only question is : Can an army have surgical precision? I personaly doubt it. Thus, having “the IDF busy” is a mistake…
right Mike: At least if they were all dead, there would be no bad ones left? a good old-style genocide wouldn’t be a so bad solution, would it?
What peaceful Palestinians?
Who are the ones who are condemning suicide bombings? Who are the ones trying to stop these atrocities? When the mullahs and the terrorists spread anti-Semitic lies, who are the ones who stand up and say defend their neighbors? When a Palestinian is injured in Israeli they are sent to the hospital. When an Israeli is injured in Palestine, they are ripped to shreds by an angry mob.
Quite frankly, short of total war or a complete re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the only way to deal with the Palestinians is to wall them off until they either learn to be civilized or kill each other. Unfortunately the Palestinian people have shown themselves entirely unworthy of trust. The charade that there can be some "road map" that will stop the Palestinians genocidal tendencies is foolish and has cost far too many lives already.
you’re again blaming some people while doing the exact same thing!!!you’re accusing them of “genocidal tendencies”, and at the same time you want to “wall them off”!!!!
you know what, saying that a whole population is crap is nothing less than racism. You can be proud of it if you want, but you are just a racist!
Walling them off is not genocide, it’s the only way to protect Israel from attack. There are plenty of walls in other countries that aren’t attacked as racist – only Israel’s.
Furthermore, the Palestinians are not a race. I have no problem with those Arabs in the Middle East who do not believe in the complete destruction of Israel. I would be perfectly willing to accept a Palestinian state if there were a Palestinian leader who wasn’t calling for more and more Israeli blood. I could accept a peaceful Palestine.
There are plenty of Palestinians in Jordan who have disavowed terrorism and are promoting equal rights – Queen Rania being a notable example of this.
I cannot accept any state based upon the murderous intent to drive the Jewish people “into the sea.” I cannot accept any state that cheers on the murder of 3,000 people. I cannot accept any state that believes that the highest calling a mother can have is to blow herself up and orphan her children.
Until the Palestinians as a people abandon these things they are deserving of condemnation and contempt.
It is no more racist to suggest that the Palestinians are worthy of condemnation that it would be to suggest that the Germans of the Third Reich were worthy of condemnation – in both cases it is not a condemnation of who they are but a condemnation of what they’ve done.
I don’t understand why the Israeli wall has to be built through areas that clearly belong to Palestine.
That’d be like me building a fence to protect my kids from the neighboor’s dog. It’s a great idea, but it looks suspiciously like a land grab when my fence cuts right down the middle of his vegetable garden.
Ah, the spirit of the Big Lie is alive and well. Geobbles would be proud.
Of course suicide bombing is bad BUT… it’s never right to deliberately target innocent children BUT… oppression is terrible BUT…
After all, it’s all the Jews fault isn’t it? Why, if they just stopped fighting back and let the Arabs push them into the sea everything would be wonderful. Their “racist apartheid state” that gives citizenship to Arabs (despite the fact that Jews can’t be citizens in Syria, or Jordan) and saves countless Palestinians lives every day is such an atrocity. Of course the Israelis deliberately ran over Rachie Corrie even though she laid down directly in front of a bulldozer that couldn’t have seen her. After all, we all know about how bloodthirsty those evil Jews are! Haven’t we all read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? I’m sure it’s a bestseller in all the Parisian bookstores.
And of course everyone uses suicide bombing to get what they want. Why today a bunch of Lakota blew up a bus in Sioux Falls because that land was once theirs! Not to mention the Argentinian suicide bombings in the Falkland Islands, the Lebanese who blow up the Syrians who occupy their country, the Mexicans who bomb buses in Texas, etc.
Oh wait, none of those things happen. I guess from all the apologia for mass-murder applies when the victims are Jews.
Suicide bombing is never acceptable. Never. I don’t give a flying fuck about some pissy little land dispute that occurred a half century ago. Even if the Israelis “stole” the land (which they decidedly did not except in the fevered imagination of those who want to destroy Israel) the last time I checked plenty of people have been dispossessed throughout history and haven’t resorted to slaughtering innoncent civilians. Making excuses is a coward’s errand, the way in which the hatred of the Jews is justified for those without the moral courage to condemn an absolutely evil practice.
If you want to say that it’s even remotely acceptable for a policeman to strap on 24 pounds of explosives and step on a bus with the intent of killing innocent civilians, fine. But don’t even fucking try to take any moral high ground with such a stance, because it’s simply pathetic. And the next time you step on a bus, I hope you consider what it would be like knowing that’s the very last ride you would ever take, and some suicide bomber pissed about some action you have no responsibility for decides that you deserve to be blown into pieces for it. Then tell me that suicide bombing is some justified response.
jay, instead of writting things like “After all, it’s all the Jews fault isn’t it?”, why don’t you just READ what other people say???
I don’t see a single line in Rachel’s text where the exclusivity of jews’ fault is mentioned. In mine neither. Why are you so insanely repeating that we are just anti-jew as soon as the debate clearly goes in the direction opposite to Sharon (‘s extremist right-wing) government, when I repeatedly told you I wasn’t. You cannot criticise Le Pen and love Sharon!!!
I can see insults, french-bashing (only god and a few reps know why when talking about the middle-east conflict), racism and hate (you almost wish us to be victim of a terrorist attack) in your post, but not a single clever discussion in regard to the two previous posts.
For example, I noticed that “walling off” people could also be called “create a ghetto”, which is what happened in Europe during WWII. Ghettoisation is leading to the rise of misunderstandings, ignorance and fear of both population toward the one on the other side. This finally ends up in a blood bath (unless both side agree on the limit, and on the actual separation -which I don’t believe have ever happen in history, and is obviously not the case today in palestine). This is especially to prevent another genocide that I don’t want that. Ignoring this fact is insulting the memory of the innocent jews who died because the nazis said so (unless you allow the term genocide to be applied only to jews, which I hope you aren’t).
Can you tell me if you really think that building a wall to separate populations is a sustainable way of dealing with this situation? Moreover, do you consider normal that this wall goes very far (16%)on what is considered by everyone to be palestinian territory (even by sharon by the way), in order to protect colonies that should in theory be destroyed (signed by Sharon again, not by an illegitimate international court of justice!!)?
this was a bit long. Sorry.
Let’s take a good look at the arguments being presented here.
10 Israelis were murdered yesterday. 50 are injured. Many of them were children. They were murdered by a Palestinian policeman in a suicide bombing.
And what is the response? That Israel shouldn’t have built a wall to protect itself. That the IDF is just as bad as those who deliberately target civilians.That the mean old Israelis deliberately killed Rachel Corrie. That it’s all the fault of Israel – never mind that those kids were just kids.
It’s the same old crap time and time again. When Israelis die, it’s never the fault of the shitbag that decides to blow them up, but the fault of those evil Zionists who want to “ghettofy” the Palestinians – when they’re not trying to commit “genocide”. Why, if Israel just stopped the settlements and gave the Palestinians what they wanted there would be peace… except they did that at Oslo and they got 9 years of bloodshed. Barak gave Arafat a chance to have a state, and he said no. Even Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia said that every life lost since then, be it Israeli or Palestinian, is the fault of Yasser Arafat for not accepting that deal.
But of course that wouldn’t do – the old judgements have been made once again, and it’s the fault of the Jew once more. Those children that were killed yesterday, well, they got what was coming to them, because their government decided to try and protect them.
If you can’t say that the killing of innocent civilians is wrong without resorting to cowardly excuses and moral relativism, then there’s something deeply wrong with you.
That Israel shouldn’t have built a wall to protect itself.
I guess my point was that they shouldn’t have built the wall through Palestinian land. It’s perfectly fine for them to build whatever walls they like – on the land that belongs to them.
“the only way to deal with the (insert group here) is to wall them off until they either learn to be civilized or kill each other. ”
For a political scientist, that’s an exceptionally stupid way to frame a point. It offers nothing of substance and makes you look really, really unbelievable.
“The Palestinians have embraced violence”
Check out “Non-violent Resistance in Palestine: Pursuing Alternative Strategies“
by Jonathan Kuttab and Mubarak Awad. Awad is a Palestinian Christian with a history of advocating non-violence. In 2002, a lot of observers were thinking that a Palestinian civil-disobedience movement was not a long way off. I think we should probably be encouraging such a movement, since it will create both an alternative to terror groups for Palestinians opposed to Israeli rule, and it would be more likely to bring about negotiations between the Israeli government and a non-PA body. It could be possible to simply circumvent the militants still associated with Arafat by supporting more moderate voices within the PA that ally themselves with these civil society groups. Hey, it’s a better idea than continuing the same way they’ve been going.
Can anybody explain to me why Israel is important? I mean, a reason that isn’t motivated by conservative Fundamentalist Christianity?
Yeah. Israel is important because it’s one of our only allies in an increasingly dangerous region, and because so many in the US have close ties to Israel.
That said, while Israel is important to the US, that does not mean it can’t take care of itself. The Israeli military is strong enough to operate with impunity in their region. Last year, acting unilaterally, IDF planes bombed inside Syria. Syria’s response was to lodge a protest. Fifty years ago their response would have been to roll across the desert in any military vehicle they could find. Israel is one of the powerhouses of the world now, though much of that strength comes from US financial and military aid. They serve as a proxy state for us in many regional issues. Their intelligence service is second to none (save MAYBE for the CIA), and they give us key information on terrorist groups.
JR hits it right on the head in his reply. The only thing I’ll add is that they’re the only true democracy in the region – although Turkey comes close. Israel is also a worldwide center in biotechnology and networking – the ICQ messenging program was originally created by an Israeli startup before being bought by AOL, and Israeli biotechnology firms are currently working on new techiques for skin grafts, artificial blood, and low-water farming. For such a small country, Israel is enormously productive, one of the reasons it’s attracted the ire of so many of its neighbors who have more land, more natural resources, and more people, yet produce far les.