A Generation Eager to Die

When did the term suicide bomber enter the daily vocabulary of war? When did human weapons become a normal entry in the military arsenal? Hand grenades ... rifles ... suicide bombers?

We are no longer shocked by young Palestinians who strap explosives to their bodies, turning themselves into cheap and mobile killing machines. We are no longer surprised by the willingness to die in the act of murder. Or to murder in the act of dying.

A 22-year-old destroyed himself along with 24 Israelis at a Passover celebration. An 18-year-old killed herself and two others, including one her own age, in a supermarket. A 23-year-old blew himself up, in an ecumenical murder of Jews and Arabs at the Matza cafe.

Suicide bombers have become so common that a reporter describes a 10-year-old Israeli girl mimicking the morning news anchor: "It's 8 a.m. and there's been another suicide attack." A 4-year-old defines the word ambulance as the car that picks up dead children after a suicide bomb.

Of all the horrific news from that dead end known as the Middle East -- and there is horror to spare -- nothing has so colored this cycle of the cycle of violence than the ordnance of walking weapons whom the Israelis call terrorists and the Palestinians call martyrs.

We are witnessing a parade of young people who finally figured out what they want to be when they grow up: Dead. And we are witnessing a culture that cheers and glorifies this ghoulish march.

I know something about suicide. I know shattered families who are left to pick the emotional nails and screws out of their skin years after the event shattered their lives. I know families who still ask themselves why and how and what if. So I understand the words of the grief-stricken Arab father of one suicide bomber, the 18-year-old Ayat Akhras: "I taught my children to love others. We hope for life."

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