Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Good God, here we go again.

I find it hard enough coming to grips with the idea of a Timothy McVeigh or an Osama Bin Laden -- a person who has come to the belief that killing large numbers of innocent people, possibly killing oneself in the process, is a viable means of attaining one's desired political or spiritual goals. But I'm truly at a loss for words -- nay, rational thought -- when I consider the fact that an entire culture of Palestinians has apparently drawn the same conclusion. To hear stories in the news of murder and horrible pain, of shrapnel and glass and blood in the streets, of the slain being people buying coffee and hopping the bus to work and eating lunch...and then to hear of the murderers being called "martyrs", to see their deeds painted in heroic light, and to listen to a Paletinian spokesman condemning "Israeli aggression"...I end up wondering not at the continuing "cycle of violence" (with the feet on the pedals being, so far as I can tell, exclusively Palestinian), but at the fact of Israel's continuous restraint.

I've always believed in space exploration and colonization, but it's things like this that make me almost agree with George Carlin when he dismisses the notion with the sarcastic rejoinder: "Yeah, I'll bet the rest of the Universe just can't wait for us to show up."