ISRAELI BULLDOZER KILLS US PROTESTER: Sorry, I can’t get too agitated over this. When you protest on the frontlines of a war you risk getting killed, even accidentally.
Jonah Goldberg wrote an essay in the summer of 2001 about Lori Berenson, the classic “sandal-ista” who dropped out of MIT in the 1980s to, as Goldberg wrotes “bum around South America with lefty and Communist-backed groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua.” She was eventually arrested in Peru “after a 12-hour shootout, killing two terrorists and one police officer. Once inside, the police found 8,000 rounds of ammunition, 3,000 sticks of dynamite, some uniforms belonging to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (known by its Spanish acronym, MRTA)”. The Peruvian government gave her a life sentence, which they reduced in 2001 to 20 years, minus the five she’s already served.
As Goldberg wrote:
I’m a big believer that some people are “asking for trouble.” When stunt skydivers die, I admit, I feel less sorrow than when kids get hurt in a car accident. When snake-handlers get bitten by poisonous vipers, I’ll often say, “Well, you know, that does happen sometimes to people who handle snakes for a living.” And, when a young woman decides to play Marxist terrorist in war torn South American countries, I don’t get too worked up when she gets thrown in jail.
And I don’t get too worked up over anti-Israel, or anti-US protestors killed in war zones.
Besides, isn’t this what the whole human shield movement is all about?
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