"Suicide Bombers Are People, Too "

This Newsweek article about the film "Paradise Now" (portraying Palestinian suicide bombers as complex and sometimes sympathetic human beings) tries very hard not to fall in the trap of glorifying the murderers. Yet its very attempts at staying impartial is immoral itself. This paragraph seems to be justifying why it is even giving the film publicity:

It’s won an Amnesty International Award, a Blue Angel for best European film and is now Palestine’s official entry for the Academy Awards (this is only the second year Palestine has been allowed contribute to the Oscar’s foreign film competition). It opened in New York and Los Angeles two weeks ago to glowing reviews in The New York Times, and Abu-Assad was featured in interviews on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times.

Yet one wonders...

If someone made a similar film humanizing child rapists, would the mainstream media wax so rhapsodically? Could a fictionalizing version of the members of NAMBLA get rave reviews? Or a film about abortion-clinic bombers?

The simple fact is that it is unthinkable to consider showing or creating such a film unless there is an audience that is willing to sympathize with the main characters.

And to take the mind exercise a little further - can anyone imagine a rave review of a film about George Bush or Karl Rove or Ariel Sharon being given by the New York Times or NPR? There might be an audience, but it is literally unthinkable that the liberal media would have anything good to say, no matter how well done it is.

Which means that in a very real sense, they identify more with suicide bombers than with those whose politics they disagree with.