I'll say this:
I AM SO EXCITED FOR ISRAEL. I can't even explain, you can't even fathom, so neith
er of us will try.I will also say this:
We all know love makes us do crazy things, and I don't know about everyone else but I feel like when I hear about things along those lines I'm thinking about being in love, like mushy have my babies grow old with me stuff. But what about the love for a son, or the love for a father? What about the love for a stranger? And what about hate? What does hate make us do? Hate for a people, for instance? I think there's more than two sides to every story. I don't think that a suicide bomber walks into a market and pushes a button only because they've been raised to think it martyr-like to do so, I think it's because of love and pain and fear and sacrifice and a myriad of other things. And there's a chain reaction, a person who influenced another person and so on and so forth
until there's no way there's only two sides to the story. My dad said it best; "No suicide bomber is a monster. They're all in pain." There's no excuse, there's no room for excuses for such heinous acts, but there's room for sympathy, and maybe even connection.
1 comment:
Right. I think you make a good point, one that often people don't see. I agree that there is no reason to condone murder, and I certainly agree that these people's reason for doing so is far more complex than many people want to make it out to be. So frequently suicide bombers, terrorists, etc., are labeled as simply "evil", but, while there are certainly those who truly relish in harming others, many of them are acting on grounds they believe to be justified, or even honorable.
You can look at it the other way around. As Americans, we bomb cities and kill civilians. But for us it's justified. Why? Because we do it for freedom and democracy, values that for all our lives we've been told are good and worth fighting for. Those who serve our country do so out of a sense of deep patriotism, and a belief in those values.
And yet when much of the world looks at our bombings, our killing of innocent people, they paint us the same type of evil that we see in terrorists. We can say that they don't understand, couldn't POSSIBLY understand why it is right and why it is just, but doesn't that then mean that we can't understand them? These people don't walk in buildings and blow themselves up because they are evil. They do so because, just like us, they are fighting for something. And, like you said, there's certainly room for connection in that.
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