I just heard Bridget Quinn on Fox News use the phrase "homicide bomber" rather than "suicide bomber." I wonder if they have a new style guide, or she did it on her own.

Ari Fleischer did it this morning. It was fun watching the usage of the term evolve on Fox this morning. At first, someone said it and then took it back saying, "Homicide, errr, suicide bombers."

By the time I finally had to leave for work, they were all saying "Homicide bombers" and not apologizing for it..

"Suicide bombing" is a name for a tactic, and trying to counteract anti-Israeli bias with a ackward, redundant term like "Homicide bomber" is silly. It reminds me of "Murder-death-kill" from Demolition Man.

Yeah, I heard Ari do it, too. I wonder if he's been doing it, and I haven't noticed, but now the media (or at least Fox) are starting to pick it up.

What's wrong with the word "kamikaze"?

It efficiently conveys the notion of attack by suicidal religous fanatics.

"homicide bombers" fails to capture the suicidal fanaticism aspect of the act, but at least it focuses more attention on the victims than the perpetrator.

How about "Islamikaze," to distingush them from the State Shinto variety, if we're concerned about the ambiguity and possible insult to contemporary Japanese?

Islamikaze, n. (iSLAM-eh-KAzee, alt. -KAZeh, contraction of 'Islamic" + "kamikaze" Japn. lit. "divine wind"), one who commits acts of murder-suicide (esp. mass murder-suicide) in service or devotion to radical Islam

Accurate, and we've been using it in the blogosphere since Mark Steyn coined it months ago, but the Administration is still trying to maintain the fiction that we're at war with "terror" rather than with Wahhabi Islam. An official designation like that would give away the game.

Cal Thomas has been advocating this term for a couple times on Fox NewsWatch now

Well, how about that... *shrugs*
I thought I was being original.

(Honestly, I'm pretty sure I'd never heard
the term before.)

If I had, I'd have used it before now...

Well, sometimes great minds think alike.

How about "mass murderer"?

I prefer the term genocide bombers

You may prefer that, but it's not accurate. Genocide seems to have lost its original meaning, it's so overused these days.

Rand :

It's sure close :

gen·o·cide   Pronunciation Key  (jn-sd)
n.

The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

Bibi Netanyahu actually had a great term for it : policide. Their trying to wipe out the political entity that is Israel.

You're not going to commit genocide by killing a few people at a time. It has to be done wholesale, as Hitler did, or the Khmer Rouge, or in Rwanda.

The eventual intent of the Palestinians may be genocide, but you can't call individual murders that.

If they were individuals that would be true. Israeli intelligence estimates that it takes about seventy support people for every bomber. This is a systematic effort and since they apparently feel that every Palestinian is expendable it could continue indefinitely. So, in effect, they are in the process of attempting genocide. One assumes they'll not succeed

Genocide would assume that they are attempting to kill every Jew on the planet (as did Hitler). This is pretty obviously impractical for them, given the population in locations other than Israel. If anything, as Netanyahu says, it is an attempt at policide, but even that is stretching it. What it really is is nihilistic mayhem and murder.

Rand :

By that stand Hitler is cleared of genocide too, since he was never going to reach America's Jews.

That's not at all clear. I'm sure that he intended to do so eventually.

and Arafat doesn't?

No, not really. I'm sure he'd like to if he could wave a magic wand, but I doubt if he *plans* to--he's not that crazy.

He'll be satisfied to just drive them into the Mediterranean. The Middle East problem (at least in Palestine) is not about genocide--it's about real estate.