Mom and I are getting along a little better this week. She didn't even drop the "so when are you going to get married?" line, even once. I guess maybe she's been following up a little on the presidential candidate platforms (or perhaps didn't want to bring up a sore subject), so we didn't really talk about that that much this morning.
Instead, Mom brought up this article from the hometown paper:
If all goes as Rabbi David Finkelstein plans, the Camp Shoresh Jewish day camp in Adamstown will become home to a moving new memorial to the victims of a tragic Jerusalem bus bombing.
Shortly before 9 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2004, a bus referred to as ‘‘Bus 19” was demolished by a 24-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber, killing 11 and wounding more than 50. The mangled wreckage of the bus was eventually shipped to the United States and toured the country with an Evangelical Christian group as a tool for understanding the realities of terrorism and to promote peace.
So let's look at what's going on here...
A 24-year-old kid blew up a bus in Jerusalem. Lots of people died. Bad, awful, very sad stuff. Lives were lost, etc, not the most uplifting stuff to talk about.
So then, rather than just dismantle the bombed out bus, some Evangelical Christian group takes the thing and brings it on tour. For, "education." I put this in quotes because I suspect the "educational" lesson they gave was not exactly the most open. Rather than try to explain why a 24 year old would chose to commit suicide (and take some innocent people down with him), instead they are they are just simplifying it all by saying, "terrorism is bad."
Well, yeah, of course terrorism is bad. But if you're going to go as far as to take a bombed out bus around with you, shouldn't you at least ask the question, "why?" Or is that too scary? It is one of those questions that doesn't have an answer at all.
I'd be curious to see what all you blog readers think of the proposed memorial. Any takers?
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