This isn’t about blacks and Arabs as a whole, but about some blacks and Arabs. And, of course, religion – not as religion, but as an anchor of identity, if you will – plays a part. Religion as it appears on the Internet, on the Arab television stations, serves as an anchor of identity for some of these youths.

“Unlike others, I have not spoken about an `intifada’ of the suburbs, and I don’t think this lexicon ought to be used. But I have found that they are also sending the youngest people to the front lines of the struggle. You’ve seen this in Israel – they send the youngest ones to the front …

His reason for the ’smallest to the front’ does hold up with respect to Israel because there it is a matter of propaganda, what is most “photogenic”.