{"id":19,"date":"2001-12-05T14:26:52","date_gmt":"2001-12-05T19:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/heroic_freedom_fighters"},"modified":"2001-12-05T14:26:52","modified_gmt":"2001-12-05T19:26:52","slug":"heroic_freedom_fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2001\/12\/heroic_freedom_fighters.html","title":{"rendered":"Heroic Freedom Fighters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI’m going through a “can’t read the news anymore” phase again, after reading up
\non the massive wave of suicide bombs going off in Israel. A particularly nice
\ntouch: the Saturday night bombing in Jerusalem had a
\nsecond<\/em> bomb placed and timed to kill panicked, fleeing and injured civilians.
\nAnd if that weren’t enough to turn my stomach, check out
\nthis
\napologia for the murderers<\/a> by Peter Preston in the UK’s
\nThe Guardian<\/a> — published Dec. 3, mere hours
\nafterwards<\/B>.\n<\/p>\n

\nOver the last couple of months, I’ve seen more than one smarmy pundit make the argument
\nthat suicide bombers aren’t cowards. The pundits lecture us that see, there we go again, unthinkingly
\nslapping people with the label “cowardly”. A “rent-a-response”, as Mr. Preston calls it.
\nIn fact, they tell us the terrorists are very brave — after all, don’t they die too?
\nWell, sure. Facing their date with paradise and 72 virgins with steely-eyed resolve, no doubt.\n<\/p>\n

\nThus we are treated to one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book: implicitly
\ndefine a term the way you<\/em> want it to be, and then castigate your
\nopponents when their definition doesn’t match up favorably with yours.
\nMr. Preston, Susan Sontag<\/a>,
\nanswer me this: how is it that your definition of “bravery” includes murderers of
\ninnocent noncombatants who can’t fight back?<\/B> Are you somehow muddled about the fact
\nthat the suicide bombers died also? Confusing that for bravery, eh? A rookie
\nmistake at best. If someone hates his own life and longs for the eternal bliss of
\nthe afterlife, how is he brave if he commits suicide? You’ve got it backwards: it
\nwould be brave of him to to stay alive<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut I should not extend Mr. Preston the courtesy of thinking that perhaps he is
\nmerely muddled — his atrocious timing and poor taste speaks for itself.
\nIn any case, I need to spend less time reading extreme-left wing British
\nnewspapers. There are only so many lectures on morality from Bizarro-world
\nthat you can take in one sitting.\n<\/p>\n

\nElana, Adiv: keep yourselves and Mom as safe as possible. I love you always… and
\nit breaks my heart that the peace you and everyone else in the Middle East deserves
\nis still yet to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But I should not extend Mr. Preston the courtesy of thinking that perhaps he is merely muddled — his atrocious timing and poor taste speaks for itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}