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“The willingness to sacrifice for the creation and maintenance of political meanings appears inconceivable to those outside of the community. We find it incomprehensible that Palestinians would be willing to blow themselves up for the maintenance of a political identity. But the suicide bomber is not different in kind from the Israeli soldier.
“Both sides in this conflict wonder at the capacity of the other to kill and be killed. Both sides try to apply a moral measure to the behavior of the other. In this, they each suffer from the same misunderstanding.
Citizens sacrifice themselves and their children not because it is morally correct but because it is politically necessary. This a necessity, however, that can be measured only from within the political world of meaning.
“We have the same reaction to the sacrificial politics of others as we do to those who believe in different gods, rituals, and sacred texts. It literally makes no sense to us; it appears “crazy.”
"How, we wonder, can anyone believe that the gods appeared in that object or that place? Why would anyone think that wine can be the blood of Christ or that God would perform miracles for an enslaved people? This shock of difference, however, usually does not cause us to doubt our own beliefs. We think others strange, but that does not unmoor us from our own sacred rituals.”
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