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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

A real uncomfortable question

Last week, Egyptian Sandmonkey caused some ripples in the blogosphere when he posted an informal poll of his friends in the wake of Qana:
I asked him what he would've thought, if a Hezbollah rocket had attacked a building in Israel, killing 55 civillians, of which 30 were children. He responded immeidtely "I would've thought it was great! A7san!".

So I repeated the same question to 8 other co-workers, and the responses so far have been as follows: 7 said they would celebrate, and 2 said that such an attack would've been bad, but justified! Yeah! Not a single person said that the death of any civllian, on either side, is an equal tragedy. Civillians dead on our side is tragic, civillian deaths on their side cause for celebration. And if you think I am being unfair or demonizing arabs or whatever, do me a favor and try it at your work place and/or with members of your family. Conduct this little social experiment and see for yourself. The results are very interesting.

I have a better question for our Arab and Islamic friends and neighbors:

If the Muslim world had the capability to turn all of Israel into a nuclear wasteland, killing millions of Jews (as well as Palestinian Arabs), and if such a land would be uninhabitable for decades or centuries because of the radioactivity, would it be worth it to get rid of Israel?

I think I know the answer. And it puts the entire conflict in an entirely different light than what one sees in the newspapers and TV.