The Wages of Death

I'm posting this particular DoubleQuotes in part as a way to balance the references to "retirement pay" for Palestinian terrorists in Decommissioning Terror 1 with a reference to the pay the families of suicide bombers have received for some time now as compensation for their acts. America suggesting Europe should pay Palestinians not to kill Israelis needs to be juxtaposed with Arab nations paying their families when those same Palestinians do in fact do so.

The thing is, the world is subtle, no? So while I can see the first quote in this pair as responating with the first quote in that one -- and would be happy to have used them both in a DoubleQuote if I hadn't already made use of one of them, no sooner did I go hunting for an apposite quote on who exactly was paying how much to the suicide bombers' families than I came across the quote from Dr. Sarraj, which sets me thinking, again, along unexpected lines -- and which I have now accordingly paired with the first suicide payment quote.

Let's get back, though, to this business of rewarding people (or at least their families) for blowing other people up. Amanda Ripley, in her piece "Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage" published in Time magazine, April 15th 2002, tells us:

...at wakes for Hamas bombers, it has become routine for an activist to approach the father with an envelope containing $10,000.

That's stunning. That juxtaposition, money envelope with funeral wake, delivers just the kind of jolt to my mind which these DoubleQuotes themselves are intended to deliver...

[ I'd like to thank Ralph Birnbaum for nudging me into making this post ]