Israel Matzav

Hamas Openly Encouraging Suicide Bombings in Official Media

With Hamas now in control of the 'Palestinian Authority' and its media, any remaining restrictions on the 'Palestinian' media's encouragement of suicide bombings seem to have disappeared. Another suicide bomber was caught today. And Hamas seems perfectly happy with continuing to promote suicide bombings. The previous subtlety is gone.

Sheik Yusef Jumaa Salameh has been cited as preaching this message over the last five years. Under U.S. pressure, Salameh lowered his profile after Mahmoud Abbas was elected PA chairman in January 2005. But a year and a Hamas victory later, Salameh is back in action. His power is bolstered by the fact that he is also the religious affairs minister of the PA.

On March 10, an Official Palestinian Authority television broadcast a sermon by Salameh aimed at the mothers of potential suicide bombers. Salameh, regarded as one of the most popular preachers in the Gaza Strip, states what cannot be confused with anything other than the position of the Palestinian Authority. In his sermon, Salameh told of the loss of husbands and sons in the war against Israel. He said the women who have sacrificed their children and husbands must not mourn them.

Instead, he explained, the role model of all Palestinian women should be Al Khansaa, a female Arab poet who lived during the early era of Islam. Al Khansaa has been used as a model for al-Qaeda to instruct women how they can contribute to jihad. Indeed, al-Qaeda named its first women's magazine after Al Khansaa, who was famous for her eulogies, particularly those written for her brother Sakhr, who died in a tribal feud. She later sent her four sons to fight jihad, all of whom were killed.

In his sermon, Salameh contrasted Al Khansaa's attitude toward the killing of her family before and after the advent of Islam. Before Islam, the PA minister said, Al Khansaa was devastated and recited poetry all day as a way to keep from killing herself. After she became a Muslim, Salameh said, Al Khansaa was no longer sad. She sent her four sons to be killed in the battle of Al Qadissiya. "When the soldiers returned from battle in victory and told her that her four children had been martyred did she cry?" Salameh asked. "Did she recite poetry? Did she tear her clothes and expose her hair? No. She said: 'Praise God who honored me with their deaths. I pray to God for a reunion under his mercy.'"

Nor was this the first of Salameh's sermons to invoke Al Khansaa. On March 11, 2005, the PA minister provided a similar sermon on the importance of the Islamic heroine. But in his latest sermon, Salameh added one important note: the victory of Islam would be in the next world, he said, where the pleasures of virgins greet the martyrs in the war against Israel. "Brothers, victory lies there, not in this world," Salameh said. Far from the ramblings of a peripheral extremist, such views should be seen as the official position of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:56 AM