Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: A world of difference

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 | 8:43 a.m.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS, we live in two different worlds. Only one of those worlds is real.

While the words of that song may provide a seemingly rational answer to the question of the Middle East muddle, they cannot stand the test of reality. Nevertheless, they do provide some insight for those of us still looking, however dull that picture may be.

Americans have a great deal of trouble understanding the popular Arab mindset that on the one hand condemns the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 while, at the same time, rationalizing a justification for those murders as if there could ever be one.

Life where we live, however more complicated it has become since the terrorist way of life, has entangled itself with our own, is still one where we know the difference between right and wrong. Flying airplanes into buildings full of civilians -- men, women and children -- is wrong. And no amount of rationalization or blaming others can make it not so.

I have been thinking about two different realities in the context of an editorial cartoon drawn by our award-winning artist, Mike Smith, and published both in the Las Vegas Sun and USA Today a little more than a week ago. In it, he reflected on the madness of some Arabs who teach their children from the youngest of ages to hate Israelis and who, in some cases, are brought up to be teenage suicide bombers. Or, as President Bush more aptly states the case, homicide bombers.

To illustrate his point, he drew a picture of a pregnant lady wearing a shirt with an arrow pointing downward and saying, "future suicide bomber. ..." His point was absolutely clear to me and everyone else with whom I have talked since that day ... when people raise their children to hate and to kill, they should not be surprised when they do just that. Nor should those people be treated as members of civilized society.

It was a pretty simple and straightforward message and one that I couldn't conceive of being misunderstood or, frankly, not agreed with by the vast majority of responsible world citizens.

That's when the mail hit. To be more specific, the e-mail. Somebody took Mike's cartoon and posted it on a website frequented by Arab viewers and sympathizers. It came complete with talking points and the names and addresses of those of us at the Sun who are responsible for such things like the publishing of Mike Smith's cartoons.

They all read the same. And there were a whole lot of them. How could we be so biased and prejudiced against the poor, oppressed people of the region? When are we going to fire Mike? When are we going to apologize to the Palestinian people for even suggesting that their kids are taught to hate and kill Israelis, and why shouldn't they teach them to hate and kill?

I suppose you get the picture. It was not a pretty one but it did present a very clear understanding in my mind of one reason why there is so much bloodshed in the Middle East and so little impetus on the part of Arab leadership to end it.

We live in two different worlds.

While we look at boys and girls with bombs strapped around their middles who are sent to discos and pizza parlors to destroy innocent children as murderers, albeit young ones, there are many people who justify such abhorrent behavior as a perfectly rational answer to what they view as years of being oppressed. There is a moral equivalence in their thought process that does not and cannot exist in our own.

We have a special place for muderers in our society and that is a long way from the place of respect and gratitude to which these "martyrs" ultimately go. We may call it hell, they call it heaven. Under those conditions, it seems impossible to find middle ground upon which both sides can stand in order to move toward peace.

I am not going to answer the e-mails because it is pointless. There is no amount of reason or rationality I can bring to this discussion that will satisfy some of these people who think Mike Smith was acting out of bias or prejudice. The truth is he was drawing his cartoon out of concern and compassion and in the hopes that something would grab hold of their heartstrings and jolt them into a world closer to the real one in which innocent people are dying.

That world, it seems, may be too difficult to find, especially for people content to live in a vastly different one.

There is the one that respects life and seeks order out of chaos; and, then, there is the one the letter writers live in that respects little, demands everything and achieves nothing that resembles a life of peace and prosperity for the coming generations.

Choose your world. Then make your choice.