Janet Maslin’s poisonous bleeding heart

In her review of a book called The Attack, the New York Times’s representative of the New York intelligensia outdoes herself by presuming to understand the perpetrator of a suicide bombing better than the husband of the bomber.

Sihem [the bomber] turns out to have boarded a bus for Nazareth, then gotten off and stepped into somebody’s car. How exactly did she wind up back in Tel Aviv, wired with explosives? And who helped her? Most bewilderingly to Jaafari [the bomber's husband, who is the author], what brought her to this point? As far as he knew, he and his wife were both nonpracticing Muslims and thoroughly assimilated into Israeli society.

This willful obliviousness is repeatedly challenged by those he meets in the course of his investigation. Did he not recognize himself, he is asked, as “the serviceable Arab par excellence who’s honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are?” Or, as the questioner puts it more angrily, “What planet do you live on, sir?” Whatever the planet, it has forever been jolted out of its usual orbit…

The doctor’s sense of futility eventually gives in to outrage, once he visits places like Jenin, the battle-scorched site of a large Palestinian refugee camp…

And in Jenin, he finds an answer to his question about Sihem. “Your wife chose her side,” he is told. “The happiness you offered her smelled of decay. It repulsed her, you get it? She didn’t want your happiness. She couldn’t work on her suntan while her people were bent under the Zionist yoke.”

Oh yes. Now Sihem’s murderous act makes total sense. Her husband was “willfully oblivious” to the connection between Jenin (site of the non-massacre that has become The Massacre) and his wife’s political act. Right?

Suicide terrorism is understandable under the circumstances.

Great alienation always leads directly to suicide and murder.

Right?