How’s that for a new name for suicide bombers? A reader suggested it. Meanwhile, in the Toronto Star, a gripping piece explaining why the Islamikaze is a coward. In most Islamikaze massacres, the perpetrator is instantly vaporized – a painless death before he greets his beloved Allah. For his victims, the following:
A person sitting nearby would feel, momentarily, a shock wave slamming into his or her body, with an “overpressure” of 300,000 pounds. Such a blast would crush the chest, rupture liver, spleen, heart and lungs, melt eyes, pull organs away from surrounding tissue, separate hands from arms and feet from legs. Bodies would fly through the air or be impaled on the jagged edges of crumpled metal and broken glass.
What I fear is that the sheer number of these atrocities is numbing us to their evil. These young Islamikazes and their disgusting mob bosses are evil personified. There is nothing noble, despairing or admirable about them. Somehow we have to resist the insidious way in which they are normalizing barbarism.
SELF-PARODY DEPT: A new survey says Canadians prefer politics to sex. Only one percent say that sex is their favorite activity.
ISRAEL’S “RETALIATION”: Good catch from a reader about the New York Times’ coverage of Israel’s latest wounds today:
Like a piano note played in the wrong key, a single word in a New York Times story today made me gnash my teeth. The story starts out: “Israel’s forces moved into four Palestinian areas of the West Bank today as part of its policy of taking back land in retaliation for terror attacks.” What’s with this “retaliation”? I had assumed the operation’s military purpose was self-defense not retaliation; Israel obviously wants to foreclose the bombings by clamping down on the towns that are the source of the bombings. Indeed, the article later states, [t]he Israeli Army said troops were carrying out searches and making arrests, with curfews in effect. ‘Forces will stay in the cities until they achieve their operational aims,’ it said in a statement, which did not mention a time frame.” Are we to disbelieve the Israeli Army then? Because when I hear the word retaliation, I think of an act of violence for its own sake: you punch me, I punch you back, as opposed to: you punch me, I handcuff you so that you can’t punch me anymore. The choice of the word “retaliation” seems meant to reinforce the NY Times’ position — its editorial opinion –that Israeli self-defense is merely part of a meaningless “cycle of violence.” Errgg (that’s teeth gnashing). At least they didn’t say Israeli tanks cause global warming.
The Dish 