Posted on 04/13/2002 1:02:27 PM PDT by N00dleN0gg1n
By Paul McGeough
April 13 2002
Hundreds of Palestinians poured in for condolences and coffee. Members of Shadi Tubasi's family formed a greeting line, handing each new arrival a postcard celebrating the "hero" of the Haifa explosion.
And in a corner, 31-year-old Walid Fayad, unsmiling as he clutches an M16 rifle, explained the unusual absence of sugar in the cardamom coffee that is served in tiny china cups: "Today we drink it bitter, so that we can share the Tubasi family's bitterness for the Israelis."
Fayad waved away the revulsion and horror of the previous afternoon, when a bomb detonated by 18-year-old Tubasi tore apart the lives and bodies of 15 people lunching in a road-side restaurant at the port city of Haifa.
We were in a fetid refugee camp in Jenin, and instead the gunman spoke with disturbing relish of the terrible fighting that was about to engulf the camp: "It'll be a massacre," he said.
"But we are ready to be martyrs. All of us await our fate . . . we want to go out with bomber's belts strapped to our bodies, because that is better than sitting at home, waiting for them to kill us. So before they kill me, I have to do something - I must explode myself with some Israelis. We want our turn to die . . . it will be good to be with God."
The exploration of the wave of self-destruction in the Middle East started with Shadi Tubasi's April 1 bombing in Haifa. It became a tour of the terror towns of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; it became a week of clandestine meetings.
We came face to face with two bombers who have been trained and were waiting to strike; with the trainers of others and those who dispatch them; with the military and political leadership of Palestinian factional cells that justify the carnage and with the man who they say lit the ideological fuse for this brutal bout of death - the ailing 61-year-old cleric, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
He said: "The Jews attack and kill our civilians - we will kill theirs. When the first drop of the martyr's blood spills on the ground, he goes to paradise. His victims, the Jews, go to hell."
So for him the suicide bomb was "an exceptional weapon".
Khaled, a hotel worker, spoke in wonderment of a martyr's encounter at the gates of heaven as someone having their file checked: "There will be blessings for 70 of his family and friends. The 72 virgins are real - their skin is so pale and beautiful that you can see the blood in their veins. If one of these virgins spits in the ocean, the seawater becomes sweet. The martyr is so special he does not feel the pain of being in the grave and all that his family has to do to cleanse his file thoroughly, is to repay his outstanding debts."
Surely, we ask, this view of the Koran should be seen as philosophical? As a parable? But no, there was a chorus of disagreement from a gathering of his friends in the teeming Jabalya refugee camp near Gaza City: "No. This is real . . . this is as it will be," said Khaled, as much for himself as on behalf of younger Palestinians who now talk endlessly of the benefits of death over life in a bombing campaign that has killed more than 200 Israelis in 18 months.
But Dr Rabah Mohanna, whose Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has claimed its own share of the violence - including last year's assassination of a minister in the Israeli Government - is confounded by youth's lunge for the grave: "Thousands of young men and women are ready to be blown up. It is a new phenomenon - you have no idea how big it is."
Until late last year the suicide business had been monopolised by two organisations - the militant and hugely popular Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Both oppose the peace process and the very existence of the state of Israel. But this year they have been overshadowed by a new group - the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which grew out of the impoverished Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus, in an attempt by Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction to mobilise younger members who were switching allegiance to the other two groups.
For the Israelis, the twin cities of Nablus and Jenin are the font of the terror that haunts their daily lives.
Political change at the university explains the urgency behind Arafat's Fatah movement setting up the brigade. Fatah used to dominate the student council and the academic staff, but in last year's elections Hamas and Islamic Jihad swept to power.
But frustration with the stalled peace process did not radicalise just the students. Community opinion polls in recent months have found Palestinian support for the renewed violence runs as high as 80 per cent.
And parents are running out of arguments for their children.
As she planned her death in February, 21-year-old Dareen Abu Aisheh argued with her family: "Aren't we being shot down like dogs? Do you feel like a human being when the Israelis control your every move? Do you believe we have a future? If I'm going to die at their hands anyway, why shouldn't I take some of them with me?"
Her uncle, Jasser Khalili, says that finally he had to admit he could not argue against his headstrong niece. She had been angered and depressed by the suicide-bomb death of a cousin and after being spurned by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade accepted her as a bomber.
About the same time in Tulkarm, the parents of 15-year-old Noura Shalhoub were trying to lift her out of her depression when she took a kitchen knife and rushed a soldier at a checkpoint near her town. He shot her and she bled to death where she fell.
In the 1990s, when there was hope the peace process would work, militias had difficulty finding suicide bombing volunteers. Now they are assailed.
A Nablus commander with the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, Nasser Badawi said: "Because the situation is so bad, many people are ready to explode themselves. We do not have to pick them - they come to us, ready to die. After training by our martyrdom unit, they know what they are going to do and they are convinced that they are dying in defence of their country."
We were in a building only blocks away from the rubble that was Yasser Arafat's Nablus office.
Why attack Israeli civilians? "When the Israeli started the targeted assassination of our leaders, we decided that if any of our martyrs could get into Israel and reach a target where people are gathered in a restaurant or a street, then they should explode themselves there.
"We are sending two messages: telling the Israeli security forces that we can still reach them, and that all their security is meaningless, and telling the Israeli public that this is the result of Sharon's policies against us."
Badawi explained his wish for maximum civilian pain and damage in Israel: "The Israelis kill Palestinian women and children in our streets, so we try to maximise their losses because blood is for blood and violence is for violence and suppression is for suppression. We will do to them what they do to us . . . so no, we will not be throwing flowers at them."
The factions say that suicide volunteers under the age of 18 are rejected. So are married men with children and anyone who is their family's only breadwinner.
The planning of suicide bombing missions is a tightly held secret. About six or eight volunteer cells are involved. They groom the bomber religiously and tactically; they make the bomb; they transport it and the bomber; they select and monitor likely targets; and they organise accommodation and disguises.
A few days before the mission, the bomber is instructed to quietly disappear from his or her home and work. Then begins a period of immersion training, of intense periods of time spent with a father-figure minder, upon whom they are coached into great psychological dependence - both to please him and to follow his every instruction.
And often the first family and friends will hear of the bomber's exploits is a news bulletin or a volley of celebratory shots outside their house when the mission is done.
Hamas sources have priced a complete suicide-bombing mission at up to $US4500 ($A8400). But what Israel is calling an "invoice of terror" - an Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade document recovered from the wreckage of Arafat's headquarters - costed a suicide bomb belt at 700 sheckels (about $A350).
Last Monday night a taxi came to the hotel, collected us, and took a circuitous route out of Gaza City and into Jabalya refugee camp. We were instructed to go to an apartment and wait. In the time that it took to make an Arabic coffee there was a knock on the door.
Two young men came in, accompanied by a silent minder. Nervously, they shook hands and said they were from Islamic Jihad - but there would be no names. They apologised for breaching an understanding that they would bring their bomb belts. "It is too risky," the taller one said.
He quickly revealed himself to be an agitated 29-year-old English teacher. His more relaxed associate was a 22-year-old student of Islamic studies.
Even before a question was asked, the nervous one said: "I trust in God and I am ready to sacrifice my life for the defence of my nation and my people."
His colleague supported him: "Jihad is the highest form of Islam. I have seen the occupation and the massacres here and I know of Sharon's massacre at Sabra and Shatila."
The first one continued: "This highlights the depths of our faith. This is not terrorism . . . we are not murderers. My obligations are to my God and to my people."
Asked what training they had been given, the older one again went to religion: "We pray and we wake in the middle of the night for special prayers; we fast on Mondays and Tuesdays; we are at peace with our neighbours and we attend the mosque for all prayer sessions.
"After that we were delivered to Islamic Jihad's military wing. We have been trained in how to use the bomb belt," and he went through the motions of strapping it on and pressing an imaginary button.
"But I have chosen that my mission will be with a machinegun on a settlement or a military post" - this is where the suicide bomber opens fire on his Israeli targets and keeps shooting until the inevitable Israeli reinforcements kill him - "so I also have had weapons training at a farm.
"We also have been taught how to dress and walk so that we will not stand out among the people at our targets, we'll either look like tourists or Israeli soldiers. We are ready, the military wing is assessing targets and they have told me to be ready. They will show me the target to make sure that I can do it and we will practise, maybe many times, to make sure that we do it right."
Asked about Western revulsion at the crude terrorism of becoming a human bomb, he said: "I will answer your Western question with another question: why do you look at us with just one eye?"
The younger, shorter man said that he had elected to die with a bomb belted to his waist.
Both young men were married and had discussed their decisions to die with their wives - and had received their blessings. The short one said his wife also would have volunteered to be a suicide bomber except she was pregnant.
They spoke briefly of life before the intifada - "we married and want children, we'd go to the computer centre and play games, we'd watch television" - and then quickly disappeared into the night.
The profile of the typical suicide bomber is constantly changing and observers of the crisis frequently are required to reposition their arguments.
Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst in Amman, Jordan, who has studied the bombers, posed a question for reporters: "What prompts a 20-year-old to blow himself up and kill as many Israelis in the process? It definitely takes more than belief in God to turn a boy into a martyr. It takes desperation, anger, loss of hope. It's believing that your life is not worth living any more."
Labels.
The weapon of the intellectually inept, the ignorant or the propagandist.
Often all three.
It is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt..
Do you know a good web-site that is not anti-semitic where views in opposition to Israel's policies can be vigorously expressed?
I am interested in finding one. I have been a conservative for a very long time. I am shocked by the extremism now on this site, by the really vicious hatred of muslims, and the mindless support for Israel.
Like Free Republic, Lucianne.com is hostile to those who will not toe the lie on Israel.
As in the days of Noah...
Personally I think it is total insanity on the part of the U.N., Europe, and the US, to even contemplate, consider, support, or dream of designating a country named Palestine, governed by insane Palestinians, under the authority of Palestinians. It's asking for more trouble.
After the attack of 9-11 my mind completely changed about a state named Palestine. Only the insane or mentally incompetent would create a terrorist country at this point in history, or any point in history. I can understand the Old Testament call for genocide now like I never have before. These people who have already murdered their new born's souls with instructed hatred, murdered their innocence should have no place to rest their foot, much less have their own country from which to blame the world for their own darkness and inability to contribute anything but death and blame for their own misery.
They need to be taken and split up to the far corners of the earth and never allowed to congregate again into a people under one flag. Gaza must go, the West bank must go, never to be occupied by a rag tag group of Arabs from all over the Middle East again. Gaza and the West Bank should be incoporated into Israel inhabited by a zero population of Palestinians if there is ever to be any peace there. Force the Jordanians and Syrians to keep their own "refugees", and ship out the 3 million that call themselves Palestinians from the "conquered" lands of Israel, that is what I suspect must happen for the problem to be settled once and for all. As a group those people poison each other, and everything around them.
Irrelevant cliches -- bromides -- do not an argument make. I can assure you: I have thought it through.
I've been on Free Republic for years. My login was removed from me shortly after I made observations, apparently forbidden, about certain religious fanatics in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I had previously had a thread pulled for similar reasons.
I can assure you that if you are willing to ignore my point to pick on the illustration, you have not thought it through. Too bad for you. You can not even tell the difference between God and Satan, nor do you care. Scary place to be in the end-times.
Please tell us, using facts from reality, what that difference is.
You can't reveal any differences between God and Satan, and .... I'm the one that hasn't thought it through?
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