Palestinians' use of kiddy bombers appalling

townhall.com ^ | 3/26/04 | Jonah Goldberg

[kattracks]

You know, in my lifetime of excessive TV watching and fairly liberal schooling I must have endured thousands of hours of public service commercials, after-school specials, gitchy-goo lectures, editorials and even songs on how wrong it is to pressure kids into taking drugs, having sex too soon, worrying about their looks and so on. I know I'm not alone.

The manufactured new morality that reveres self-esteem and condemns peer pressure above all else is omnipresent in our culture. And since the old morality of absolute notions of right and wrong seems to be on the way out, maybe we should look at the case of poor Hussam Abdu not through prism of, say, the Bible but through the lens of Oprah.

Hussam Abdu is what the kids today - and yesterday - call a loser. Reports say he's 14 or 16 years old, but that he looks like he could be 10. Everyone in the Abdu family says he's gullible and easily misled. The kids at school pick on him, calling him a "dwarf." To say he has trouble with girls would be a compliment.

Like most boys, but especially miserable ones, Hussam had day dreams of being a hero. He wanted to meet girls. He wanted to prove the bullies were wrong about him. So, when the offer came to strap 18 pounds of explosives to his body to blow up some Israeli soldiers, Hussam leapt at it. If he succeeded, they told him, he could have sex - right away - with 72 virgins in paradise and he'd be a hero.

According to news reports, the boy's parents thought he acted strangely on Tuesday, giving candy to friends and family. When his mom asked why he was behaving so oddly, he replied, "I just want you to be happy with me."

On Wednesday he left for school, but never arrived.

[quantim]

These kids aren't doing this because of the "occupation." They're doing it to be cool or to get (otherwordly) chicks.

Now just what is the definition of a Pali-Chick who thinks blowing the self up is somehow cool?  

[GeronL]

Notice that they went to kids in a big way after the fall of Saddam and his checks to the families of suicide bombers. This kid was given something like $23...

[cpdiii]

I think that one point Goldberg missed is the fact the use of 14 year old kids means they are running out of adults that will do this.

[KriegerGeist]

I would like to see Peter Jennings (though I don't watch him) justify this or make it all to be Israel's fault.

Isn't there some kind of hell reserved for people who do this sort of thing to children...that Jesus said that it would be better for them if they had a millstone tied around their necks and cast they into the sea?