The suicide bombers and the carnage continue.
Why? Why don't they ask why? When are they going to analyse the reasons for these hari-kari missions instead of indulging their damaged egos with divine retribution that leads to more suicide bombings and more retribution in a never-ending cycle of violence?
The few who have asked "why" have only scratched the surface. They learn that the suicide bombers want to become martyrs and that others have encouraged their martyrdom. Then they go back to their guns and tanks and F-15s and tractors and resume Israel's own brand of shock and awe treatment of the Palestinians.
They do this without ever following up with the logical, intelligent why: why do these Palestinian youths feel the need to become martyrs? If the Israelis even got that far in their questioning, they'd be way ahead of where they are now.
The Israelis have a plethora of stock answers: "Islam is militant, extremist by nature, led by fanatical mullahs. The Palestinians are primitive and barbaric." To the Palestinians, however, who have endured decades of torture, deprivation, destruction and ignominy at the hands of the Israelis, the stock responses are nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The questions need to go even deeper than the superficial excuses made on behalf of the sufferers. The Jewish intelligentsia might once have helped. But it seems that the once-renowned Jewish astuteness has faded in the melee. I keep remembering what a Jewish friend at university said to me as long ago as 1954.
It was really a rhetorical question: "Why", he asked, "are the Jews giving up their greatness in music and science and the professions to become farmers and soldiers?"
As an intelligent, well-read, worldly-wise Jew, he knew very well how much suffering Jews had endured throughout the centuries. Yet, apart from any Palestinian considerations, he believed that the price the Jews would have to pay for a Zionist state would be much greater than anything that they might otherwise suffer.
As it turned out, not many of the great brains and talents opted to settle in the new land of Zion. Instead, the intelligentsia stayed in their own countries, running the media, banks, investment houses, universities and the professions. In England and America, they became active in government where they could manipulate policy.
Day by day, even the brilliant minds that stayed behind have grown increasingly unpopular. The manipulations of both government policy and financial institutions have begun to take their toll. Unemployment, the stock market crash and the loss of retirement funds have started to pinch.
Soon it will hurt, and those who feel the pinch will begin to question, to look for answers, to ask "Why". When they discover that people like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz misguided the government into the unnecessary Iraqi fiasco, they will begin to feel strong resentment.
When the public realizes that the manipulations by Jewish-run financial organizations has cost them dearly, the resentment will deepen even further.
As the realization dawns of the costs in taxes of supporting Israel and of the fact that Israel has ignored every United Nations resolution, costing sound relationships among other countries to falter, the resentment could well turn into the seeds of hatred.
When terrorism spreads even further, innocent Jews in other countries are going to become prime targets. The suicide bomber, as in Bali and Morocco and Saudi Arabia, will no longer be known almost exclusively to Palestine and Israel.
Perhaps then the brighter Jewish minds that stayed behind will begin to ask "Why?" - the question that the Israeli farmers and soldiers seem unable to ask.
The farmers and soldiers will continue to make life impossible for the Palestinians, encouraging their exodus from Palestine. They can't afford to assimilate them into a truly democratic society. As the Palestinians number more than Israeli Jews, they would eventually dominate.
Thus, the Palestinians must face Diaspora. Suicide bombers will continue until the farmers and soldiers have destroyed most of their homes and livelihoods, which will force most to leave for refugee camps in Arab countries.
There's no longer even the perceived threat of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, so the Israelis no longer need to keep their human shields, the Palestinians, as a modicum of protection against the use of WMDs.
Getting rid of the Palestinians, however, will feed organizations like Al-Qa'ida, and what was once directed at the farmers and soldiers who never asked why, will become directed at the Jews who were too busy supporting a ruthless Israel to ask "why" themselves.
As the terrorists become more sophisticated and widespread in their operations, fear will also spread and increase. Deaths will increase. Freedoms will be swept away by draconian anti-terrorism measures. The world will live in a police state.
All because a bunch of brainless farmers and soldiers in Israel can't be bothered to ask "Why".
The latest suicide bomber (at the time of writing) was a young starry-eyed girl. Why would such a pretty young girl, who should be starry-eyed about love or about something great she learned in her studies, feel so desperate for herself, her family and her people that she would wrap explosives around her body and blow herself up? Why?
If the occupiers in Palestine can't be bothered asking the question, Jewish leaders in the rest of the world had better start asking it for them. The time has come to end blind support for the carnage and suicide bombings, lest the infection grows and spreads like an uncontrollable virus with no respect for its victims.
*Paul Balles is a retired American
university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the
Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see
http://www.writerfreelance.com
and http://www.pballes.com.