American martyr

Posted are photos showing the incident March 16 in which an American activist was killed while protesting the destruction of Palestinian houses by the Israeli army. More links: Assoc. Press story; backgrounder from the Olympian, the woman's hometown paper. Update: the U.S. State Department has asked Israel to investigate the incident.

Personally, I'm less than outraged by this event. Of course it's a tragedy, and of course the woman showed courage. But she was there to put her body on the line, and she died doing exactly what she wanted to do. I admire that kind of commitment. But I don't think you can call it an outrage that she died under those circumstances. An outrage would be if the Israeli army (for example) stopped her car on the way to the demonstration and shot her in the street.

As for her cause, I'm even more ambivalent. It's surely true that the Palestinians are suffering under the Israeli rule of their territories, and tearing down or bombing houses in those areas is a brutal tactic. But of course the Palestinians have provoked it by bombing innocent people in cafes and buses -- which I think is about the most vicious and cruel tactic a cause could possibly resort to, short of a chemical weapons attack.

Considering the fact that Palestinians continue to resort to these bombings, I'm amazed at how much sympathy they have among the American left. At peace rallies all you hear is sympathy for the Palestinians -- the connection with the war in Iraq is never explained -- as if the Palestinians were innocent victims. Nobody mentions suicide bombings. It's as if people are afraid that any criticism of anybody who is Muslim would be construed as racist.

But the left has been this way for years. See this Salon article from May 2002, this article from the Nation of June 2002, or this piece from the Feb. 2003 Weekly Standard. And some people are boycotting all the recent peace demos if they're sponsored by ANSWER.