Posted on 07/01/2002 8:28:59 PM PDT by areafiftyone
The mother of a Palestinian master bomb-maker killed in an Israeli raid said Monday she felt sympathy for Israeli victims of suicide attacks.
The Israelis say bombers her son Mohaned Tahir, 26, sent on their way killed about 120 people.
Sitting with her surviving three daughters in their comfortable Nablus apartment, Omaieh Tahir spoke tearfully of her son killed Sunday in an Israeli attack on a Hamas hide-out. She said if she could turn back time, she would advise him to take a different path in life.
She said that while in a Palestinian jail for his Hamas activities, he had promised her that he would change his ways and take over his late father's carpentry store.
"I had a dream that he would graduate university, go into the business, get married," she said. "Now it's too late."
Palestinians say Tahir, an Islamic studies graduate of An-Najah University in Nablus, was taught to make explosives and prepare bombs by Hamas regional commander Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, himself killed in an Israeli missile strike in November 2001.
Israel holds Tahir responsible for the deaths of at least 100 Israelis, saying he supplied the explosives for a Jerusalem bus bombing near Gilo this month, a March attack on a Passover holiday celebration in a Netanya hotel and last year's blast outside a Tel Aviv disco.
Sixty-nine people died in those three bombings, and the Israeli military says Tahir helped plan and execute dozens of other attacks.
His mother said she feels sorry for the victims.
"When I saw on TV Israeli people killed by suicide attacks, I felt sympathy," she said. "They have mothers like me, I don't like to lose my son and they don't want to lose their sons, but it's politics. The Israelis are occupying our land and killing our people, so our sons want to respond."
Imprisoned by Palestinian authorities in June 1998, Tahir was one of 30 Hamas activists freed shortly after the current round of violence erupted in September 2000.
His sister Rana, 38, said that one by one, 16 of the released men were killed by the Israelis. Although some died in spontaneous firefights, most were killed in organized raids like the one which killed Tahir, she said.
Omaieh said the wave of killings caused her son to go underground and abandon his pledge to turn his life around.
"I believe that if the Israelis had not assassinated his comrades, he would have given up his activism," she said.
In January this year he narrowly escaped what his family said was an attempt on his life, when Israeli troops stormed a Hamas hide-out in Nablus, killing four activists they found there. Tahir had left the building an hour earlier, Rana said.
In May, Israeli commandos raided another Hamas safe house. Two Palestinians were killed in the shootout, but Tahir jumped from a second-story window and got away, she said.
On Monday his luck ran out. Tahir and another Hamas activist, Imad Darawaze were killed when Israeli forces hit a house with machine gun and tank fire.
The witnesses said that after the scorched bodies of Tahir and Darawaze were dragged from the shattered and smoking building Israeli bulldozers moved in to completely demolish the structure.
| Hamas Chat: How To Murder Americans |
| Internet surfers looking to discuss how to murder American citizens, need only to log on to the official Hamas terror gang website. The site’s chat room has recently hosted a discussion, in which participants have described how they would go about murdering Americans. Here are some excerpts from the discussion (courtesy of the IDF website): Al-Awsad (user number 1): Once a week, a group of American "dogs" come near us on the sea front. I have been following them for a long time and am interested in your suggestions for ways to get rid of them secretly. Salam (user number 2): If they arrive in a private car, put a large amount of sugar in the gas tank of the car. Then, you can ambush them on the way back because the car will get stuck in the way. You will have many options to get rid of them. You can run them over on the road, after they abandon the broken down car. You can put a trap on the beach if they tend do a lot of walking. If you have people with you and 4 cars, you can stop them at a certain point on the road, at a traffic light for example, block them from all directions and burn them in their cars using a Molotov cocktail. MSKZ (user number 3): Read Koran verses on them and then kill them one by one, after you have made sure they are Israeli American tyrants. Al- Awsad (user number 1): Thank you all very much, but I would like to get rid of them quietly. They have a cabin on the beach were they meet every week. It is very easy to get into; that is, the operation can be carried out using a poison gas or an electrical short circuit. Don't forget that they have communications devices like cellular phones etc, and that there are between 5-10 Americans. Habib Allah (user number 4): I believe that if you sneak in (the cabin) on days they are not there and spread an effective and quick poison that works on contact with places like door handles and telephones, or put poison in the food or on cups and plates, it would be very effective because it would kill them on the spot. You can search for a way to prepare the poison on the forum itself. But my advice to you is that you get to know the poison extremely well or get help from someone who is in a science or pharmaceutics faculty. Al- Awsad (user number 1): This is an excellent way, but what are the strong poisonous materials that act quickly? Maybe I should put the poison in the water (tank) before they come? Saafalaha (user number 5): Why be discrete? Let them serve as an example for others like them. Let the Americans understand that they are not safe in Muslim countries. Burning their car is excellent or you could shoot all of them. The country is filled with weapons. |
Note to self: don't post until the second cup of coffee.
LOL - Doesn't sound like JPost either. But I guess they are trying to be fair and balanced. I am usually good after 2 or three in the morning too.
But...but...I thought the "cruel IDF" bulldozes the homes of terrorists!
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