Posted on 06/26/2005 12:38:08 AM PDT by MadIvan
It was about midday when a young Palestinian woman from the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza approached an Israeli checkpoint clutching a special permit to visit a doctor on the other side of the border.
The girl had big, brown eyes and her black hair was tied in a ponytail, but it was the strangeness of her gait that attracted the attention of the security officials at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.
That afternoon, on June 21, the 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss, was brought before the press by Israeli intelligence. Her neck and hands were covered with scars caused by a kitchen gas explosion six months earlier. The ugly scars - which had been treated in a hospital in Israel - had probably helped turn her into the perfect would-be huriia (virgin), the ideal martyr, since they would make it difficult for her to find a suitable husband.
The decision to publicise her case was intended to show that a terrorist threat remains despite a lull in the intifada since the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire agreement at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February.
According to the Israeli doctor who attended Wafa at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, she received blood transfusions during her treatment. "I told her, with a laugh, that now she has Jewish blood in her veins," he said, adding sadly that she had "seemed so nice - we got a lovely thank you letter from her family.''
Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''
Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"
And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"
Then she started to cry. ''I don't want my mother to see me like this. After all, I haven't killed anyone … will they have pity on me?'' It is unlikely. Wafa has become one of a very special group of females: the women who have tried - and failed - to die while killing for the Palestinian cause. I recently visited the Israeli jail that holds these "suicide women" near the finest Israeli villas, in the heart of the most fertile area of the country, the Plain of Sharon.
They are here, and still alive, because they changed their minds at the last moment, because they were arrested, or because, like Wafa, they did not succeed. They are kept in a kind of labyrinth, behind seven, or perhaps eight, iron doors and gates, at the end of long corridors to which few people are allowed access, and which are reached after climbing and descending one flight of stairs after another.
Their unarmed guard, a young, calm-looking blonde woman, calls them her "girls". "There are 30 of them, between 17 and 30 years old, some of them are married and others aren't, some of them have children," she told me. "Their stories come out of the Thousand and One Nights. Some of them did it to make amends for a relative who was a collaborator, others to escape becoming victims of honour killings, and for the psychologically frail or depressed it was a good way to commit suicide and at the same time become 'heroines'. Personally, I don't judge them or hate them, because if I did I wouldn't be able to look after them any more."
One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: "Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs]."
According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair".
Her fellow prisoner, Kahira Saadi, from Jenin, is one of the jail celebrities. A mother of four, aged 27, she was held responsible for an attack in which three people died and 80 were injured. Zipi Shemesh, five months' pregnant, and her husband, Gad, were among the dead. They had gone to an ultrasound appointment and had left their two daughters, Shoval, seven, and Shahar, three, with a babysitter. They never came back.
Kahira was given three life sentences and another 80 years. She looked pale, sad, anguished. I asked her if the dead tormented her during the night. "No," she said. "Anyway, the actual attacker would have blown himself up even without me. I didn't kill anyone myself, physically."
Who do your children live with? "With my mother-in-law, my husband is in jail, too."
Aren't you sorry you ruined their lives as well as your own? "I did it to defend them. I'm not sorry, we're at war. But perhaps I wouldn't do it again. It was an impulse," Kahira answered balefully.
I think the real reason for what you did was different from the official one. "You're right," she said, "but I'm not going to tell you what the reason was."
You're paying heavily for it. Who comes to see you here? "Nobody came for the first two years, but now my children are beginning to come."
Have you had the courage to tell them you're never going to get out of here? "No, and I trust that God will solve my problem somehow. I tell you again that I didn't physically kill anyone that day."
What did you do? "I helped the attacker to get into Jerusalem. I gave him some flowers to hold in his hands."
When? "I don't remember the exact date, only that it was Mother's Day. That's why I prepared him some flowers."
Then it was February, I told her.
"How can you remember it so well?" she asked.
Because my son was killed on Mother's Day, I said, and I watched as she grew pale and seemed to stagger.
No, it wasn't you, I explained. He was killed in 1998, while your attack was in 2002. But we certainly have an anniversary in common.
At this, Kahira gave me a look that I'll never be able to describe. She didn't utter another word.
One question has bothered me since my visit to that prison. The parents and the relatives of these failed martyrs, what happens to them afterwards? What do they feel after the tragedy, with that knowledge? I decided that I would ask Wafa's father, Samir al-Biss. Samir is the owner of a tiny, shabby grocery shop. For many years, before the intifada, he worked as a day labourer in Israel. After the initial shock of his daughter's martyrdom mission, he disconnected the telephone and now will not speak directly to anyone.
He has, however, allowed Wael, Wafa's cousin, to answer on his behalf. "Wafa's father is still in a state of shock," Wael said. "He wishes to say that he can't bring himself to believe that his daughter was going to blow herself up. He believes that she was put up to it and exploited by someone and that it's not fair that the whole Palestinian population should be punished for what she has tried to do. The Palestinians don't have to pay for her act," he added sadly.
I tend to agree with him. Neither the Palestinian people nor the Israelis should have to pay for the fanatical acts of their extremists.
Take their babies away from them, fill their food and water with salt peter and birth control hormones, sterilize everyone taken into custody..........
Print up the info and send it to her in prison.
The quote below also sums up the dangerous predicament Israel has placed herself in, since some people think appeasement of these serial killers will function.
"The terrorist recognize Israel's weakness, and the flight from the Gaza Strip encourages them to continue implementing attacks, until they chase us out of all parts of Eretz Yisrael," Zvika Bar-Hai, the head of the south Mount Hebron regional council, said after the attack.
Second teen dies of wounds sustained in shooting in West Bank
But yes, the bad ones are really creepy and demented.
I dream of peace and happiness myself.
Those out there which remain under the illusion the likes of Wafa Samir al-Biss & the horde of self detonating lunatics can be dealt with should read this again.
'When a soldier asked her (Wafa Samir al-Biss) to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.
Fascinating read. They're completely narcissistic. It's all about them, their wants and needs, resentments -- real or perceived -- without regard for consequences. Two year-old mentality. How would they'd be treated in the US...but with our leaky borders, we'll find out one of these days. Will Nancy Pelosi and Durkin, et. al beat down the jail doors to make sure they get therapy, understanding, a brand new Koran, plus an ACLU approved law team? Silly question. And that newly elected Iranian hardliner, announcing he'll make Iran the very model of a modern Islamic state with all the bells and whistles -- an oxymoron if ever there was.
Ping.
Yes.
I wish I could remember what Ann Coulter said after 9/11. Kill them or convert them?? Someone knows the direct quote.
I believe that that society has become a nation of psychopaths, because of genetic mutation, due to extremism(and radical hatred). It's the old argument of nature vs nurture. Humans do evolve for better or worse. We've been doing it since Adam and Eve, and some folks turned out better than others. I'll mention the Amalekites in the Bible. Gargle(heh)them up and get an education. Some of believe that they, the Jihadists, are the modern day descendents. Excuse the spelling. I have insomnia, and it's actually a good thing. Pandora finally showed up, and she's hungry. The cat is the perfect size for a good meal. She's too heavy for me to shove her back in her tank.
Make no mistake, they are indeed human beings. They lack a salvific faith in God by His methods. Consequently they have body and soul, but lack a living spirit. Observe their behavior in religious ceremony and observe how they will counterfeit a relationship with God by self-induced emotional exercise. They confuse their emotions with spirituality.
As human beings they are responsible for their thinking and decisions and behavior. In this case, she may not have physically succeeded in mass murder, but did murder in her soul. She is criminal and the death penalty is established to protect government from internal destruction.
Both believer and non-believer fall within the bounds of the divinely instituted establishment of government.
Positive reinforcement, yielding land for the fantasy of peace, only encourages more murder and violence. Besides, the Koran dictates signing treaties with infidels (the US), and Jews doesn't count. They get a free pass. Israel knows there's no dealing with these monsters, and the big question is when will the US come to its senses. We seem to have a limitless capacity for stupidity.
Either to pay for a male relative's perceived transgression of Islam or to avoid an honor killing I'd wager.
A very backward mentality, these people. Sometimes I doubt they can ever be brought to any sense of normalcy in thought or behavior.
No normal, happy child honestly and spontaneously answers world peace. He/she has to be indoctrinated, taught to say that. Normal children have a very small circle of interest and attention span. Arab tyrants have spent generations blaming the US and Israel for every ill known to mankind, robbing their own people of billions in aid sent by the US and the west. The Palestinian question is a beard. If they'd had a state fifty years ago, bought and paid for by the US, they'd still be blaming Israel and the US for the fact that they don't have enough brains to pour sand in a hole.
My dream is to die on my feet, fighting for what I believe in. My Country, mu Culture, my Home, my Freedom.
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