Posted on 04/22/2002 1:58:48 PM PDT by Steve Eisenberg
Israel’s month-long offensive to smash Palestinian terrorists strongholds in the West Bank has had a side effect worth noting: some ordinary Palestinians are no longer afraid to speak out and admit their distress – in front of television cameras.
In the Jabalya camp of the Gaza Strip, the local correspondent for Israel’s Channel 2, Seliman a-Shafi, gave Sunday night viewers a rare glimpse into the mind of a would-be suicide killer - a terrified adolescent aged 14 who freely told his story. Sent on a suicide mission against an Israeli military position – he did not say by which group - he set out with another boy in the dark of night. Halfway there, he stopped. “I didn’t want to die,” he said, tears rolling down his face. “I wanted to go back to my family.” He tried to persuade his friend to return home with him. The friend refused. The boy turned back alone and a few minutes later heard an explosion. Filled with fear, he ran hard until he reached the safety of home.
The boy’s family took part in the interview, led by his comfortably ample mother and surrounded by her large brood. “They take our children when they are too young to understand, to decide if they want to die. Why don’t the take the louts hanging round the markets? My boy is in shock. He can’t stop weeping. He doesn’t know whether he did right or wrong. We don’t let him out of the house without his father – in case he changes his mind again, or they catch him. We are all in shock.”
In a strong, assertive voice, she told the interviewer that she was not the only mother in this situation. The Gaza Strip is full of women keeping a tight hold on their young sons.
“All of us here are badly traumatized. But there is not a single psychologist in the whole territory to help us.”
The boy from Gaza was not by any means the youngest child to be marked out as a “martyr”. In Jenin, where the walls were plastered with large posters depicting dozens of dead youths, Israeli soldiers learned to beware of innocent-looking 10- and even 7-year olds with hidden bombs.
People shouln't be too hard on the parents, who don't denounce suicide bombing in general, only for their own kids. The mother is extremely brave for having talked to Israeli TV at all, and if she had gone further could have been next on the list of "collaborators" to be shot.
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There are counselors available in Israel and if Arafat and the other terrorists would just get off these poor people and allow them to participate in Israeli society, they could get some help.
It's unfortunate but I think the family's appearance on Israeli TV, coupled with the boy's failure to complete his "mission", is already quite enough to get them on the "list".
Gaza boy failed to stop friend's suicide attack
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
SHEIKH RADWAN, Gaza Strip, April 22 (Reuters) - Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Tafish and his friend Haitham often talked about launching a suicide attack against Israeli soldiers guarding a Jewish settlement near their homes.
But when talk turned to action, Ahmed backed down. Haitham Abu Shuqa handed his schoolbag to his friend, walked towards the guardpost with two homemade pipe bombs and a dagger and was shot dead.
Haitham, whom Ahmed called "my soulmate," was killed four days ago by Israeli troops guarding the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ahmed said the talk of attacking soldiers began when he and his school friends, including Haitham, became distraught over news reports of heavy Palestinian casualties during Israel's West Bank offensive launched on March 29.
"We could not tolerate seeing children our age being killed every day," he told Reuters on Monday. "We all felt we had to do something."
Still trembling, Ahmed said they walked along the Mediterranean shore last Thursday after skipping school. He tried to persuade Haitham to go home but said he insisted he would "die as a martyr."
"I told him not to be a fool. 'You will harm nobody with these pipes. You will die. Let us go back and we can come back when we get older'," Ahmed said at home in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City.
In his schoolbag Haitham had two homemade pipe bombs made from gunpowder extracted from fireworks. As they continued to walk towards the settlement, he said Haitham told him: "Listen Ahmed, we must die as martyrs."
"When I refused to continue with him he asked me to keep his school bag." The two separated and a few seconds later Ahmed heard the crack of gunfire which killed his friend.
"I am so sad. I am so disappointed," the tearful boy said.
Ahmed said he and his friend had no affiliation with any Palestinian group and had acted independently.
A number of young Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip after straying too close to heavily guarded settlements, which are on constant guard for attacks by militants.
But no one can remember anyone as young as Haitham actually trying to mount an attack.
Ahmed's mother blamed Israel for pushing young Palestinians to such extremes. "They are innocent children. They cannot see the consequences of what they do," she told Reuters.
The family was keeping a close watch on their son for fear he might try to do something to avenge Haitham's death.
04/22/02 16:47 ET
Insightful reply.
(Actually if you were referring to DEBKA as a source, I might be inclined to agree with you. However you already amply demonstrated your position on an earlier thread when you had the audacity to equate the destruction at Jenin to Hiroshima.)
It's the Israeli's fault?
The parents haven't taught their children the basics of action=consequence! The Palis are learning from our Libs how to claim victim status!
Above we have one entire paragraph from the Reuters report. In normal journalistic practice, shouldn't the quote support the lead sentence of the paragraph? In this case, the quote provides no such report. This leads me to suspect that the Israeli press accounts are more accurate.
To summarize this part of the Israeli reports:
a. The mother is claiming suicide bombing of Israel is good.
b. The mother blames unnamed Palestinian fighters for using teenagers as the suicide bombers.
Beyond this issue, the big difference in the Reuters and Israeli accounts has to do with whether the young teenagers did this on their own, or were put up to it by adults. Although I have my suspicions, there see no real strong evidence one way or the other. Am I missing something?
This, the ending paragraph, is another part of the Reuters report I disbelieve. There are two possibilities:
a. The family is keeping a close watch on their son for fear that he will, for any reason, change his mind a second time and again go out to suicide bomb.
b. The family is fully confident the boy will not try to suicide bomb again for the same reasons he started out the first time. Now they are only concerned about the boy making an attack to avenge Haitham's death.
It is obvious (although unproveable) to me that "a." above is the truth. However, Reuters chose to report something extremely close to "b." I suspect that the reason Reuters, without any supporting quote, chose "b." is because it supports the "cycle of violence" nonsense beloved of liberals.
WOW.....But they left out the part where Chelsea was only a block away.
That is because these are different instances. Though Reuters tends to work hard for a Pro-Pali slant, this interview was taken by the reporter and the other incidence was done on the number two TV station in Israel. There are only two Jewish TV stations in Israel, channel one and channel two.
Despite the liberal medias joy in the "martyrdom operations", in reality it is a very dirty business that targets teens at there most unstable point. It is no coincidence that the age of the suicide bombers matches the American teenager suicide peak. You never see the Palestinian Authority figures blow themselves up. Most of them are outside infiltrators from the Arab League, very few come from Palestine. The Palestinians are just cannon fodder to them. Palestinians are considered the dogs of the Arab world by the Arab League Nations. One said they had interbred with bedowin and were not true Arabs, whereas he was of Persian blood lines to me. Give you a bit of a perspective doesn't it?
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