Posted on 03/26/2004 9:21:50 AM PST by marshmallow
The case of a 14-year-old Palestinian boy captured wearing a vest packed with explosives at a West Bank checkpoint makes the headlines in Israel's media and prompts condemnation of the people who sent him out to die.
Viewers saw footage of what Israeli television called a "mentally challenged" boy stopped at a checkpoint south of Nablus.
The boy, Husam Abdu, was shown standing at a distance from the Israeli soldiers whilst he was instructed in Hebrew how to remove the vest.
'Frightened child'
"After a roughly 40-minute drama in full view of the cameras filming a frightened child wearing an eight-kilogram explosive vest, Husam managed to take off the explosive charge," the TV reported.
In the Israeli press on Thursday pictures of "the little bomber", as they call him, dominate the front pages.
Some show him dressed in an oversized army jacket, others picture him bare-chested, having removed the suicide belt at the roadblock.
The boy became shy, Jerusalem Post reports, asking the Israeli troops, "Do I have to take my clothes off here?"
The paper praises the "quick-thinking" of the Israeli paratroopers who noticed the boy.
"It is sad and tragic," a battalion commander tells the paper. "My soldiers spotted Abdu as he pushed through the line of Palestinians waiting to undergo inspection."
"Seeing the soldiers' weapons, he became frightened and told the soldiers he was scared," the commander said, adding that the soldiers' quick action also "saved the lives of 200 Palestinian men, women, and children who were at the roadblock".
"Blowing myself up is the only chance I've got to have sex with 72 virgins in the Garden of Eden," The Post quoted Husam as saying his handlers had told him.
His family said the teenager had acted strangely on Tuesday, inexplicably handing out sweets, getting his hair cut in the style his mother liked, and telling her he would do anything she wanted.
"You are never like this," The Post quoted her as saying, "What's happened?"
He replied: "I just want you to be happy with me."
Unloved
"I wanted virgins in heaven," is the headline in the Hebrew paper Yediot Aharonot. It quotes the boy as telling his interrogators: "My teacher told me what was waiting for me in heaven so I decided to commit suicide."
The boy reportedly said he was scared when the belt was put on him. "Now I'm afraid my mother will be angry with me," he added.
Yediot Aharonot asks the teenager: "What went through your mind, Husam, a second before you were stopped at the roadblock? Did your legs tremble with fear, or with the weight of the belt? Did cold sweat drench your body? Where was your mother?"
It tells him: "Children, Husam, should not be in paradise, they should be in the playground."
Ma'ariv focuses on the boy's desire to be a hero. "I wanted to be the man" is its headline.
The paper says Husam told the soldiers questioning him that he was willing to commit suicide "because people don't love me".
A Ma'ariv commentator compares those who "send boys to explode and turn into pulp" to "Satan".
And a Yediot columnist asks: "Who poisoned his soul? Who planted in him the tons of hatred that made leave home to kill and get killed?
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
You tell this to an American kid and he'll laugh. Tell it to a Palestinian and he immediately decides to kill himself.
What's missing here? Is the Arab sex drive so overwhelming that it numbs their critical faculties? Or do the Palestinians specifically seek out kids who are "mentally challeneged", as the article states and are more likely to swallow this nonsense?
What was it Golda Meier said?
Something like: There won't be peace in the Middle East until Palistinians love their childern more than they hate Israelis...
Most American kids are not steeped in islam from day one and therefore have a better grip on reality.
-Eric
On a news clip, some woman told this kids mother that it would have been an honor for her son to blow up. The mother told the lady to "shut up".Supposedly one of the sons of a Hamas leader got caught up in the propaganda and wanted to be a "martyr". His mother vetoed that idea rather harshly (though perhaps dad did too and she got the credit for it).
-Eric
The only bomber with easier access to Israel would be a young girl or a mother with a baby. You can be certain the terrorists are looking for gullible youth as we speak.
Not only do they have a better chance of passing through a checkpoint, but they preserve an older and wiser recruiter so he can go locate more people willing to die. (And note that one boy was told to deliver a bomb even though it had a cell phone detonator, he was not planning on doing anything more than transport.)
The other interesting thing is that is that in the face of unanimous world condemnation they are promoting the lie that Israel is cleverly making all this up. Of course they have to deny the participants themselves giving the same version as the IDF.
I think they are losing the propaganda war, as well as their leadership. Maybe Israel should kill more of upper and middle management.
I believe they've already used the "young girl" approach. It "worked" in the sense that she did, in fact, blow herself up and kill a bunch of innocent folks at the same time. But that seems to "work" when the homicide bomber is a young man, as well.
Ancient paganism was full of such, from the erotic, to the ridiculous (google up 'Priapus') to the bloody murderous (Ba'al, Molech).
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