February 2006
Dear friends and colleagues,
Comments on January
Newsletter,
Comments on January
Newsletter
On Suicide Murders
An American colleague wrote:
Unfortunately
for all the victims, it is not true that
Palestinian
terrorism is "unprecedented in scope and
ferocity." If the comparison is limited to 2002-2006,
the
total number of suicide attacks in
more than 150. Of the more than 12,000 civilian deaths
(and more than 1500 coalition force deaths), about
two-thirds are attributable to
suicide bombings, despite
the fact that civilians are
explicitly targeted in fewer
than 5 percent of these attacks.
In May 2005 alone,
suffered almost as many
suicide attacks as
suffered over the
previous decade.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071601363.html>
It is depressing
to think that the total number of
innocents killed by Iraqi
suicide attacks is greater than
that of Al Qaida
victims, even if the 9/11 attacks still
claim the greatest number for
individual attacks.
More
depressing still, these numbers of innocents killed
may be surpassed by victims of
Tamil Tiger attacks since
1987. The
Tamil Tigers were, as of 2000, "unequivocally the
most effective and brutal
terrorist organization ever to
utilize suicide terrorism"
(according to Yoram Schweitzer
of the Institute for
Counter-Terrorism in
1987,
there have been over 180 such attacks, with more than
5,000
victims, among them several prime ministers of Sri
Lanka and
The only
good thing that can be said about the violent
times we live in is that since the
end of the Cold War,
state-led full-scale war
has been on the decline. Let's
hope that this trend applies to
suicide attacks as well.
On Amir Peretz
Guy Doron, from
I don’t
agree that the Labour candidates list has not
renewed. Labour has lots of new promising faces. Not only Ayalon and Braverman
but also Yechimovich. Moreover, Peretz brings a new social-human spirit to the political
debate, very similar to the European’s political agenda these days. For once we
start to look like Western regimes, and more importantly, the political
language has suddenly changed, focusing on citizens and human beings rather
than on territories and land. Peretz may open new era
in Israeli politics.... I never thought this, but it seems that for the first
time in my life, I will vote Labour.
Enjoy the
attached, from
With my very best wishes,
Rafi
My last communications are available on
http://almagor.blogspot.com
Earlier posts at my home page:
http://lib-stu.haifa.ac.il/staff/rcohen-Almagor
Books archived at http://almagor.fetchauthor.info
Center for Democratic Studies http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/~rca/center/