Can we get even a little respite from the politically correct clap-trap — just for one moment? No. Today, Newsweek published the rant, “Suicide Bombers Are People, Too,” about 2 touchy-feely films which will teach all us naive people to see the human side of terrorist murderers.

But “Paradise Now,” a film distributed in the United States by Warner Independent Pictures, is one of the first feature films that tries to show the potential killers/martyrs as people. Childhood friends Said (Kais Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) drink tea at work, play and quarrel with siblings at home, develop crushes on women out of their league and discuss such mundane things as water filters with their mothers just hours before they’re chosen by a militant group to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

How nice. The terrorists drink tea and discuss mundane topics — then go exterminate Jews. How nonchalant (aka, amoral). I’m sure that Hitler wiped his butt, and that Stalin trimmed his nose hairs. Together, they killed 50 to 70 million people. But Jews are the ones vilified by Newsweek and other media outlets. Israeli defense of its civilians is often characterized as state-sponsored terrorism, with the added cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Is discernment so difficult? The people of the nation of Israel try to go about their business everyday having to worry about when the next Palestinian nut-case is going to blow up a café, bus, or movie theater. But the poor, oppressed Palestinians are “desperate.” They can’t take living in their self-made hovels — a condition they inherited from a “leadership” that has spent the last 100 years teaching children to hate and how to build explosive vests. These “leaders” have stolen all the foreign aid from the mouths of their own Palestinian babies. Says one of the film’s subjects, “I’d rather have paradise in my head than live in this hell.” Self-made hell, that is.

While Israel has built a vibrant economy — $129 in GDP per year, less than 2 percent which is U.S. aid — Palestinians have concentrated on rocket factories and kindergartens to train homicide bombers inculcated with anti-Semitism. Since Palestinians have placed hatred on the top of their agenda, ignoring the need for the building of social institutions and a sound economy, and pining for the day they’ll take back “their land,” many of them work for Jews. Work for Jews, but then blow them up. Nothing like biting the hand which feeds you.

It should be noted that in the early 1900’s, as Jews immigrated to the Holy Land, many Arabs from Lebanon and Syria did, too. There were Jews living in Israel after the Roman-forced Diaspora until the 1900’s. For Palestinians to claim sole propriety is bunk.

After the Oslo Accords, many Jews and some Palestinians took the risk of doing business together. Some of them were killed by Palestine’s “freedom fighters;” others were scared out of business. The terrorist logic: we’ve got to keep “our” people suffering, so we can fan the anti-Semitic flames in preparation for “driving the Jews into the sea,” as Egypt’s President Nasser once said.

The irony of all this: These touchy-feely films about the homicide bomber next door are to open in Tel Aviv to Jewish audiences.

This highlights the great divide between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. The Jews (and Arab Israeli citizens) live freely in an open society, where differing points of view are permitted and encouraged. The Palestinians live in a closed society governed by terrorist thugs and Holocaust deniers.

One would like to believe that this stark contrast would have some impact on the pundits who continually quote the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” cliché. But instead of addressing the real issue, that Palestinians must learn to adopt democracy and free markets — i.e., assume personal responsibility — the pundits at Newsweek continue to push the warn-out dogma that Palestinians act only out of “desperation.” The pundits are so wrapped up in their victimization theories and white guilt, they cannot see what the real solution is: a fundamental shift in Palestinian attitudes away from their obsession for destroying Israel, which is a military, tactical, and strategic impossibility.

Of course Palestinians deserve a homeland, but certainly not one run by the over-the-top Islamist extremists like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. The shift in attitudes will occur, but sadly, only with the prodding of well-targeted Israeli missiles.

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Related: Palestinians

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