Robert Tracinski Questions The Morality Of Sacrifice

TIA Daily • June 19, 2006

The Suicide Bomb Morality

The Palestinian Example Should Cause Us to Question the Morality of Sacrifice

by Robert Tracinski

The West's conflict with Islamic terrorism is more than a "clash of civilizations." It is, at root, a moral clash between two world views and two moral models, a clash much wider and more important than any political conflict.

I was reminded of this by a brilliant observation in a recent column by Charles Krauthammer—an observation far more significant than Krauthammer himself seems prepared to recognize. Writing about the way in which Palestinians have consistently rejected every opportunity for statehood, peace, and prosperity, instead choosing constant warfare and destruction, he concludes: "This embrace of victimhood, of martyrdom, of blood and suffering, is the Palestinian disease."

This is indeed a dreadful disease—but doesn't Krauthammer realize that it is not limited to the Palestinians, that it is spread as an epidemic across the globe? Indeed, the only reason the Palestinian terror war enjoys such sympathy and tolerance throughout the world is because the worship of suffering is the world's disease, a very old affliction that has evaded our cultural immune system by disguising itself as a morality. That morality is accepted as uncontroversial in today's world, and you hear it, and probably nod in agreement, whenever someone tells you that self-sacrifice is the essence of moral virtue.

But isn't self-sacrifice—or, as Krauthammer puts it, "victimhood, martyrdom, blood and suffering"—the essence of the horrific plight the Palestinians have chosen for themselves? And shouldn't this make us question, at its very roots, the morality of self-sacrifice?

The Palestinians show us what a society based on sacrifice actually looks like, in its purest, most fanatical form. It is a society built around a single moral model: the suicide bomber, who is lionized on billboards, on television, in popular songs. And this is not just the propaganda of the corrupt Palestinian rulers. One of the delegates elected to the Palestinian parliament in the populist upsurge for Hamas was Umm Nidal, the "mother of martyrs," who has sent three of her sons to kill themselves in terrorist attacks on Israel, proclaiming that their "sacrifice…makes me happy." (She is not alone. For those who can stomach it, the Middle East Media Research Institute provides a transcript of a series of interviews with mothers of suicide bombers, in which they consistently say things like "I hope more of my sons will become martyrs.")

It is only by understanding this worship of the suicide bomber that one can understand the political choices made by the Palestinians. Taking the suicide bomber as their moral model, they seek to emulate his fate: in their lust to destroy Israel, they are willing to accept the utter destruction and collapse of their own society.

It is important to recognize that, aside from the cynicism of a few corrupt officials, for the great mass of Palestinians this worship of sacrifice is sincere and thoroughly un-self-interested. By rejecting every chance at peace and coexistence with Israel—breaking every truce and turning down every peace offer—they have lost everything and gained nothing. Their decisions are driven, not by any narrow, practical goal, but by a moral imperative: the morality of self-sacrifice.

Look to the other side of the security barrier and you see a very different society. While the Palestinians raise their children on visions of blood and murder, the Israelis—like us Americans—are largely preoccupied by the business of producing, creating, making a living. Consider, for example, the vast Gaza greenhouses handed over from the departing Israelis to the Palestinians. In the hands of the society that "made the desert bloom," these greenhouses produced millions of dollars worth of produce. Under Palestinian control, they were looted and their products have literally been left to rot.

As with the Cold War examples of East and West Berlin, Palestine and Israel offer side-by-side laboratories for opposing moralities. The contrast to America is even more vivid.

America is a nation founded, not on the ideal of self-sacrifice, but on the right to "the pursuit of happiness." When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1832, he reported that the moral doctrine of "self-interest properly understood"—not hedonism, but a version of rational, benevolent self-interest—was "universally accepted": "You hear it as much from the poor as from the rich."

As a result, the distinctive model for American culture is not the suicide bomber but the "self-made man": the entrepreneur, the inventor, the person who achieves prosperity by hard work and ingenuity. Implicitly, we recognize that the proper business of life is not sacrifice but achievement. This is the actual code by which most Americans live.

The tragedy is that we don't recognize it.

In America, and around the world, we are still too morally intimidated by the traditional appeals to the virtue of sacrifice, or by the confused invocation of the "sacrifice" of our courageous soldiers—which fails to recognize that it is an act of the most profound self-interest to resist the rule of tyranny and terror.

And so we pay lip service to the nobility of sacrifice. This is what explains the decades-long tolerance of Palestinian bloodlust. If sacrifice, suffering, and victimhood are greater virtues than prosperity and achievement—well then, who can outdo the Palestinians?

This lip service to sacrifice also undercuts our certainty and moral clarity at home. British columnist Janet Daley, writing about Tony Blair's youthful fascination with Marxism, laments that the Conservatives haven't come up with a "morally attractive case for capitalism" despite the fact that "it is free markets that have delivered mass prosperity and personal self-fulfillment on a scale unprecedented in human history." But is this really such a mystery, when everyone denounces "selfishness," so that personal prosperity and "self-fulfillment" are viewed as morally unimportant at best and morally suspect at worst?

Only one prominent intellectual in the last century—Ayn Rand, the great intellectual defender of individualism and of rational self-interest—has been brave enough to name the moral lesson. Rejecting the morality of sacrifice, she declared that "The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live," while in her classic novel The Fountainhead, her hero laments that "The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing." Ayn Rand remains a controversial figure, scoffed at by both left and right. But this phrase, "perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing"—could there be a better description of the Palestinians' suicide bomb society?

Look at the horrific plight the Palestinians have chosen, and you will observe the real meaning of a culture of self-sacrifice. Look at America, by comparison, and you will see the real, life-affirming benevolence of a culture of rational self-interest.

The evidence is out there, and its moral lessons are clear—if only we are brave enough to learn from them.