I just visited the Deir Yassin Remembered web site and learned some facts that I did not know about. I read through some of the material and learned that indeed the events at Deir Yassin is definitely a massacre of sorts. Obviously it is not on the scale of some other massacres in history, but it is a massacre nonetheless. I do agree with some of the statements on the site that Westerners are finally viewing Palestinians as Human Beings. Personally, I was probably guilty of looking at Palestinian people as "terrorists" or as bad human beings, but my feelings have changed more recently. I do believe that those who attack the United States are terrorists and that they should be held accountable for killing innocents. But I also now have an understanding of what the Palestinian people are going through and it is truly terrible. The fact that these people constantly live in fear is terrible, and I am more understanding now than before.
We do have this idea of 'deserving' victims, the conflict is not portrayed in the U.S. in such a way that does not label Palestinians as innocents because they have resisted Israel with violence. It is interested that you bring up this point of American perspective, it certainly seems to support the video we first watched in class about the U.S. media's portrayal of the conflict and how much we support Israel.
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