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All palestinians are Terrorists
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Hamas leader's wife forbids son to become suicide bomber
By NINA GILBERT AND MATTHEW GUTMAN
The wife of senior Gazan Hamas figure Abdel Aziz Rantissi has refused to allow her son to carry out a suicide operation against Israel and become a shahid (martyr), according to the transcript of a phone call released by the Israeli security services.
The tape of the call was confiscated in a raid on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's offices. The date the call was made is unclear.
The transcript was played on Israel's new Middle East satellite channel that broadcasts in Arabic and English.
Rantissi's wife, Umm Muhammad, was contacted by a Hamas military-arm activist who called to inquire about her son after he failed to attend mosque a day earlier. According to the transcript, she responded that her son was fine, but did not go to mosque because he was studying for exams.
The activist said that her son was supposed to meet a group and be assigned a mission.
But she responded that while she supports the activists, her son is "not involved in with those things, and is busy with studies."
The activist responded: "I can't understand how a woman like you would reject our request and is not responding to a call to continue the jihad against Zionism."
She said in response that she "does not know people like you," and hung up the phone.
Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin said he was informed about the channel's decision to broadcast the contents of the phone call. He said that the content of the call was of enough importance to override considerations of the right to privacy.
Rivlin said he hoped the contents of the call would have a cumulative impact on the Palestinians to uproot the phenomenon of suicide attacks, although much more is needed.
Palestinians reacted with suspicion to the report.
While some believed the taped conversation would simultaneously spark an intra-Palestinian debate on suicide bombing and discredit Hamas leaders for hypocrisy, others noted that Israel's decision to expel family members of suicide bombers would likely have a greater impact.
The surprising revelation of the supposed hypocrisy of a Hamas leader came a week after Israel assassinated the founder and leader of the Hamas military wing, Salah Shehadeh, and a day after Hamas planted a bomb that killed seven and wounded 97 at the Hebrew University.
"Rantissi will have a hard time explaining to the public why his position should be different than others whom he encourages to be martyrs [suicide bombers]," said one Palestinian expert, who asked to remain anonymous.
However, most Palestinian sources believe that the conversation recorded on tape by Palestinian intelligence services and captured by the IDF in an April raid on Arafat's Mukata headquarters in Ramallah was likely a Shin Bet ploy to sow dissent within Palestinian society against the Hamas leadership.
"This whole episode is very strange," said Nablus Fatah leader Housam Khader. "But I suppose Umm Muhammad represents the mood of all Palestinian mothers, 99.9% of whom do not want their sons to become martyrs."
However Khader noted that the Palestinians' is a patriarchal society in which a woman has little say. "She can be saddened by a son's choice, but a mother cannot prevent a son from becoming a martyr, if that is his will either for religious or national purposes."
Khader added that he, too, would try to prevent his son from being a suicide bomber: "I know that if we want to liberate Palestine we need to sacrifice, but I also would not want to send my children to be shahids."
According to Palestinian sources there was reason to doubt the veracity of the tapes. Most questioned why a male Hamas member would contact the wife of a Hamas leader to ask permission for her son's suicide. Such an illicit conversation is especially extraordinary considering the orthodox nature of Hamas.
They also doubted that anyone would take the tapes seriously.
"Why would anyone phone this housewife directly? This is a military movement after all. Why would anyone want to go to the women?" observed one expert, who called it "neither a sophisticated nor meaningful move" on the part of the Shin Bet.
Rantissi laughed at the broadcast, saying the incident happened 10 years ago, when his son was young and he himself was in an Israeli prison. He said Hamas does not use telephones to recruit members and does not contact mothers.
"Any woman in my wife's situation at that time, with her husband in prison and her telephone under surveillance, would have refused such a request," he said.
News agencies contributed to this report.
By NINA GILBERT AND MATTHEW GUTMAN
The wife of senior Gazan Hamas figure Abdel Aziz Rantissi has refused to allow her son to carry out a suicide operation against Israel and become a shahid (martyr), according to the transcript of a phone call released by the Israeli security services.
The tape of the call was confiscated in a raid on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's offices. The date the call was made is unclear.
The transcript was played on Israel's new Middle East satellite channel that broadcasts in Arabic and English.
Rantissi's wife, Umm Muhammad, was contacted by a Hamas military-arm activist who called to inquire about her son after he failed to attend mosque a day earlier. According to the transcript, she responded that her son was fine, but did not go to mosque because he was studying for exams.
The activist said that her son was supposed to meet a group and be assigned a mission.
But she responded that while she supports the activists, her son is "not involved in with those things, and is busy with studies."
The activist responded: "I can't understand how a woman like you would reject our request and is not responding to a call to continue the jihad against Zionism."
She said in response that she "does not know people like you," and hung up the phone.
Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin said he was informed about the channel's decision to broadcast the contents of the phone call. He said that the content of the call was of enough importance to override considerations of the right to privacy.
Rivlin said he hoped the contents of the call would have a cumulative impact on the Palestinians to uproot the phenomenon of suicide attacks, although much more is needed.
Palestinians reacted with suspicion to the report.
While some believed the taped conversation would simultaneously spark an intra-Palestinian debate on suicide bombing and discredit Hamas leaders for hypocrisy, others noted that Israel's decision to expel family members of suicide bombers would likely have a greater impact.
The surprising revelation of the supposed hypocrisy of a Hamas leader came a week after Israel assassinated the founder and leader of the Hamas military wing, Salah Shehadeh, and a day after Hamas planted a bomb that killed seven and wounded 97 at the Hebrew University.
"Rantissi will have a hard time explaining to the public why his position should be different than others whom he encourages to be martyrs [suicide bombers]," said one Palestinian expert, who asked to remain anonymous.
However, most Palestinian sources believe that the conversation recorded on tape by Palestinian intelligence services and captured by the IDF in an April raid on Arafat's Mukata headquarters in Ramallah was likely a Shin Bet ploy to sow dissent within Palestinian society against the Hamas leadership.
"This whole episode is very strange," said Nablus Fatah leader Housam Khader. "But I suppose Umm Muhammad represents the mood of all Palestinian mothers, 99.9% of whom do not want their sons to become martyrs."
However Khader noted that the Palestinians' is a patriarchal society in which a woman has little say. "She can be saddened by a son's choice, but a mother cannot prevent a son from becoming a martyr, if that is his will either for religious or national purposes."
Khader added that he, too, would try to prevent his son from being a suicide bomber: "I know that if we want to liberate Palestine we need to sacrifice, but I also would not want to send my children to be shahids."
According to Palestinian sources there was reason to doubt the veracity of the tapes. Most questioned why a male Hamas member would contact the wife of a Hamas leader to ask permission for her son's suicide. Such an illicit conversation is especially extraordinary considering the orthodox nature of Hamas.
They also doubted that anyone would take the tapes seriously.
"Why would anyone phone this housewife directly? This is a military movement after all. Why would anyone want to go to the women?" observed one expert, who called it "neither a sophisticated nor meaningful move" on the part of the Shin Bet.
Rantissi laughed at the broadcast, saying the incident happened 10 years ago, when his son was young and he himself was in an Israeli prison. He said Hamas does not use telephones to recruit members and does not contact mothers.
"Any woman in my wife's situation at that time, with her husband in prison and her telephone under surveillance, would have refused such a request," he said.
News agencies contributed to this report.
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This site is by a couple of European artists who describe their time in Jenin. Here's a sample:
http://this.is/jenin/text3_en.html
Water
The name of the river is Almuqtua`a, Non Continuous.
Doctor Rasheed asked us in fluent Italian, Would you like to meet our heroes? Come with me to the hospital. I want introduce you to Moraima. She has been working with us here for twenty-four days and knows nothing about her family. They managed to leave the camp during the first days, when we realised it was not an isolated and quick raid, that the soldiers were here to stay. We guess that they may be in Taybee or in Birkine, two hamlets, very near here, as schools there have been used as assembly points for those who left Jenin.
Not everybody wanted to leave; many women stayed, and they had to cook with the little water we still had. They baked the bread which we traditionally eat, made with flour and chickpeas. The women were the heroes here, though they didn't have any weapons, but they shared their bread and dried fruits with us. With children on their backs they climbed up and down the mountainside to fetch foreign journalists and photographers who wanted to come to the camp. Many American journalists sat on the roofs of houses near the camp and took pictures with telephoto lenses. They were willing to pay hundreds of dollars per day to have access to people's roofs, and were surprised when no one accepted their money.
By the way, we had some water thanks to an American woman; she lives near here since many years. She is a missionary of some kind. She got a truck and loaded it with hundreds of cans of water. She drove slowly and calmly up to the tanks and said she intended to drive into the camp. The soldiers said it was impossible, it was a military zone now. But she kept driving and told them: 'I am going in with the water, if you want to stop me you must shoot me.' They were so astonished they let her pass; it was the first water that reached the camp for ten days.
The women have suffered the most, we men are always prepared, but the women cried when they saw the soldiers use their pots and pans as chamber pots and smeared faeces in plates and glasses. The women rule the homes and it was the homes that were desecrated. Almost all the bedrooms were smeared with blood and urine, a woman brings with her many sheets when she gets married and she keeps embroidering sheets for the dowry of her daughters. The Israeli soldiers wrote graffiti on the walls, 'We don't want you to have more children'.
A Palestinian couple have an average of five children, an Israeli couple only two. We live in two different demographic worlds. We believe in children, they are our guarantee for a happy old age, the Israelis believe in the State and they believe it is the duty of the State to care for them when they become old.
We believe and trust in our family; that's why they don't want us to marry and have children. That's why they take our young boys, from twelve years up, they are potential terrorists, they are potential fathers to new Palestinians. They want erase us as a nation, as a people. Abu Michel and his wife Sared have studied in the former Soviet Union. He became a journalist in Moscow, she an agronomist in Kiev. When they came home she got a job in the new Ministry of Agriculture, with the responsibility of modernising the cultivation methods on the farms and to find new water sources for the city. Jenin, which in Arabic means 'the beautiful garden', has always taken its water from a river which ends in Haifa, the place the most refugees come from. The water of the river has been appropriated by the Israelis since the war in 1967, and is now used to water the farms of the settlers around Jenin. The inhabitants of Jenin have very little water left and the beautiful gardens are dry.
The facts is that the Israelis control more than seventy percent of all the water sources of the region, and the subterranean sources of water are off limits for the Palestinians.
The children teach me some elementary Arabic. I practise the accent and the intonation. 'I am only a tourist, I live in Sweden', 'I need a car', 'Where is the next checkpoint?' 'We are artists, we are not activists' 'We are here as ordinary people only'.
When we travel over the bridges in Jenin we see only a dried-up riverbed.
Ana L. Valdés, Writer
Cecilia Parsberg, Visual Artist