re: #492 SanFranciscoZionist

None of those cultures were killing people I don’t like—but I think it holds true that a nation can have a political culture that celebrate death and violence.

I’m torn on this issue. There is a real cult of martyrdom in much of the Palestinian community, and a concerted effort in much of the Arab world to raise children to see Jews as evil. Is it unique to the Arab world? Hell no. We’ve seen similar things in many places.

Mordechai Kedar wrote an article where he talks about how Arabs are desensitized to violence because they see animals killed for food. Well, bullshit. My grandpa grew up on a farm in Kansas, and saw cows and chickens and pigs slaughtered from an early age. Helped, once he was big enough. He was not a violent man, and he didn’t glorify violence. Rural people everywhere, Jews too, see and saw animals killed for food. When you focus on some crap like that, you’re just reaching for something, anything, to make the ‘other’ scarier.

But a culture of violence, a culture of evil, can exist, and it has, in a lot of times, and a lot of places.

My husband grew up on a farm. He should have been desensitized to see births happen, right?

(Actually, he nearly died during the first childbirth. That was when he looked at our newborn daughter and said, “If she were a goat, she’d be walking by now.” I decided to let him live, mostly because I couldn’t get up.)