David, Goliath, and the Black Panthers: The Paradox of the Oppressed Militant in the Rhetoric of Self-Defense

摘要

Both the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an tell the story of David and Goliath, in which David, a youth armed only with stones and a sword, challenges and kills the giant Goliath, thus securing the victory of the Israelites over the Philistines. The event was a military victory; it also created and secured the identity of a people with a sense of its own power. Today the phrase "David and Goliath" is used as shorthand to refer to a situation in which a smaller or significantly weaker force defeats a larger and much more powerful one.