Russians are hardly suicidal, yet massively undertook suicidal missions in WWII.

I think you are confusing soldiers being used as fodder in the conventional sense versus soldiers being used as bombs. Suicidal human waves of attack are not the same as suicide bombers – not to my thinking.

Jews – non-suicidal – planned to die en masse defending themselves in case of German invasion of Palestine.

Dying in defense is totally different from dying for an offensive attack.

Arabs conduct suicidal missions because it’s their only military option, not because they are divested from reality. At least, that’s true for the leaders who send the shahids.

But suicide bombing is NOT the arabs’ only military option. If they can get a suicide bomber into Israel, then that bomber can easily place his bomb somewhere and escape to do it all again. If a suicide bomber can get onto a bus, then he could just as easily throw his bomb onto the bus and try to escape to do it again.

No, there are many different acts of sabotage that palestinians could try. They have thousands of military options other than single suicide bombers, whose actions serve only to chip away at Israel’s self-restraint (as you and I are both advocating Israel lose all self-restraint and just fight, already) without gaining any sizeable military or political ends. Everything the palestinians have now, Israel would have given them without any suicide bombing – in fact Israel would have been happy to give them much more.

Jewish society is not that individualist. The concept of purity is communal. Transgressors pollute the entire community. The famous Jewish social interconnection also testifies to communal instinct. Individualism is simply a function of economic development when an individual can survive on his own.

Look, every society has individualistic and communal aspects, but the question is where the emphasis is. With Judaism (and later Christianity) the emphasis is on the individual. Judaism instructs the individual on how to act, and metes out punishment for the individual.

In Judaism, guilt is used as the main controlling mechanism. This is totally individualistic, in nature. No one needs to know that I have done something wrong for me to feel guilty. This use of individual guilt is what causes Jewish populations to generate such large sectors of guilt-ridden, self-hating leftists.

In arab culture (and more generally, Islamic culture) guilt is not used in this way. They concentrate on shame, instead – which is not an individualistic point. One cannot be shamed unless the transgression is PUBLIC knowledge. i.e. Shame is a communal concept.

There is much that can be said on this point, but much of the difference between Judeo-Christian (Western) culture and arab/persian/muslim culture can be succinctly described as:

(Individualism, Guilt, Atonement) versus (Tribalism, Shame, Revenge)

Because of these immense differences in the base structures of the cultures, it is very hard for Westerners to truly understand arabs’ “thinking”, much as Americans never really understood kamikazes.

These differences also lead to problems when Westerners use empathy as their guide. Tribal cultures don’t feel the same as individualistic cultures in many situations and using empathy (the golden rule and its contra-positive) leads many to errant thinking and mistaken reactions.

Let me just note that the humiliation that I am addressing above is one of their own construction. It is the humiliation I addressed in the first post. A tribal culture that is constantly humiliated by itself, and its own failings, becomes suicidal. That is what we see with the arabs.

You are correct that Israel has not yet extracted a large cost from any arab populations for their aggressiveness, but, as I said, the only defense that the arabs have, now, is Israel’s own self-restraint. It is clear that arabs have done everything in their power to break Israel’s self-restraint, without receiving much in return – which cannot be viewed as anything but suicidal.

In any event, we both agree on what the remedy to this situation is – pain brought to the arab populations, and without any moralizing or feeling. Pure, unadulterated pain.

However, the Arabs are not acting normally. The major difference is that Israel could essentially annihilate the Arabs anytime it wants. A normal population does not start a fight with an enemy, where the population’s only defense is the self-restraint of the enemy, and not just in losing, but in being totally wiped off of the face of the Earth.

This sort of unrelenting, suicidal strategy throws western minds for a loop. It is just too insane, and really only illustrates their humiliation at being such losers. That is what really drives them mad – that they are unable to compete in anything, without embarrassing themselves, except suicidal strategies and tactics.