Hamas's Web School for Suicide Bombers Part 2

 

by Yohanan Manor and Ido Mizrahi

 

2^nd  part of 2

 

Demonization of Jews

Al-Fateh takes every opportunity to promote demonization of the Jews, described as "the lowest of the human race."[37] Jews are regularly accused of being enemies of Islam, inherent tricksters, and treaty violators, for whom there is no place in Palestine:

Tell them about your forefathers and about the Jews' forefathers and explain the difference between them. For they [the Jews' forefathers] violated [their] treaties, killed the innocent ones, and transformed falsity into truth and truth into falsity through their trickery … Talk to them about the Jews' trickery against our Messenger al-Mustafa [Muhammad] and [tell them] that this trickery will continue until the hour of judgment.[38]

Stories and articles on the website portray Israel and the Jews as thirsty for Palestinian blood and lusting to commit murder and acts of cruelty for the sake of their own pleasure.[39] A prime example of such demonization can be found in the following excerpt from a story told by a grandmother about Muhammad al-Dura. Dura, a Palestinian child allegedly killed in a gun battle by Israeli troops in September 2000,[40] became the poster boy for the second intifada and has been idealized as a shahid (martyr):

He and his father arrived at the roadblock guarded by the criminal Jewish soldiers, the car was not allowed to pass, and Muhammad went by foot with his father … [T]he soldiers descended on them as the wolves descend on their prey, and began to fire around them first without hitting them. Muhammad stood by his father and said: "Do not worry, their bullets will not hurt us, we have done nothing to them, why should they kill us?" His father responded: "They are Jews, Muhammad." … Muhammad was hit by shrapnel … Muhammad's father began to shout in the direction of the ambulance (which could not move forward due to the fire): "The boy is dead! The boy is dead! Help us!" One of the sniper soldiers laughed in scorn at this father … [and] said in his criminal mind: The solution is to rid him of his son, then aimed the sniper rifle at Muhammad's chest, smiled and began to shoot. The bullets pierced Muhammad's heart … The soldiers' teeth … stuck out like the fangs of wolves … their hearts were like the hearts of wolves that have no human emotion in them.[41]

The wolf imagery also appears in other editions: Jews are "wolves whose eyes blaze with evil, evil fills their hearts … They are indeed the murderers of the prophets."[42] The latter accusation harks back to a common interpretation of the Qur'an[43] giving these efforts at demonization a religious dimension. Similarly, Jews are slurred many times on the website[44] as descendents of apes and pigs, a terrible insult in Islam, with its origins in the Qur'an.[45]

 

Educating Future Suicide Bombers

At times it seems as if Al-Fateh's educational mission is the single-minded creation of the next generation of suicide bombers. Demonizing and dehumanizing the Jews prepares young readers for future action. However, Al-Fateh does not merely exhort children to take up arms to kill Israelis and become jihad fighters, it indoctrinates them to seek shahada or martyrdom. Suicide bombings are idealized as an expression of devotion to Islam and as a sought-after pleasure, enabling the shahid to ascend immediately to paradise. Terrorist attacks and suicide bombings are highly praised and their perpetrators glorified.[46]

To overcome the youngsters' natural reservations about committing suicide, the site also systematically and cynically exposes the readers to graphic images of torn limbs and dead bodies in order to desensitize them to violence and death.[47] Similarly, the last wills and testaments of suicide bombers are used to sway youngsters and prepare them psychologically to "follow in the footsteps of the fighters in order to liberate this land from the impurity of the contemptible Jews … know[ing] clearly that my blood will be shed and my organs scattered."[48]

Al-Fateh publishes scores of jihadist testimonies[49] such as this from the will of suicide bomber Isma'il al-Ma'aswabi, who detonated a car bomb killing two Israeli soldiers:

love of jihad and martyrdom rules my life, my soul, my feelings and my heart … It is difficult for the soul that has tasted the sweet taste of jihad, the suffering in which is delicious … to rest anywhere else than Paradise …Whereas I am living in Paradise … do not be sad my brothers as I am a shahid in Paradise …and I will see you there with God's help.[50]

The religious justification for this act of self-destruction is made explicit for young readers in the following passage:

Muslims who have been slain are in Paradise, and [the Jews] who have been slain are in Hell. They [the Muslims who were killed] have been granted martyrdom, which is the Muslims' hope and goal in this world. They died because their time had come, and had the Jews not killed them, they would have died [anyway]. But God wanted Paradise for them, so He granted them martyrdom … Be reassured my beloved one, that at the moment of their martyrdom they do not feel pain at all. They feel as if they are only pricked by a needle.[51]

 

Glimpse of the Future?

Both Al-Fateh and its parent organization Hamas have on rare occasions displayed some sensitivity to intra-Palestinian debates about peace and sometimes have noted popular aspirations for a peace settlement if only to show their futility. Thus the story of 13-year-old Yasmin Shamalawi:

Yasmin Shamalawi rejects violence as a means of confronting the other, believes in peace as a means of achieving the goals of the Palestinian people and rejects the killing of Israeli children just as she categorically rejects the killing of the children of Palestine. And she goes on to say: "I don't carry a rifle as the singer Umm Kulthum once sang: 'I now have a rifle in my hands, take me with you to Palestine …' All I will make is a sincere and true call on behalf of the children of Palestine to the rulers of Israel, so that they may look at us and their own children through the perspective of childhood and the future … and let us live together, as there is room for all in the land and in the heavens."[52]

Unfortunately, this is an exception to the rule. Al-Fateh and Hamas's radical, hard-line, rejectionist stance are not compatible with a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More typical of Al-Fateh's viewpoint is the republished last will and testament of suicide bomber Ahmad Marmash, who murdered five and wounded more than 100 civilians at a shopping mall in Netanya in 2001:

many of the sons of this nation are killed, and they [the leaders] are waiting and standing idly by, claiming that the solution of the problem is the solution of peace. Do you think that the Zionist enemy understands the message of peace and the peaceful solution?[53]

In another posting, a young girl recounts her response to an official from the Israeli Ministry of Education, who visited her school to speak of peace:

Do you expect peace between the wolf and the lamb? … The wolf wants to devour the poor, weak lamb because it drank from a brook … peace, honorable sir, with the wolf of occupation which took everything from us … imprisons our youths? Our warriors will pursue them and kill them. The pupils applauded me and whispered … "the occupation will fall … no peace with the enemies."[54]

Yasmin Shamalawi's statement may offer some a glimmer of hope and may even indicate an ability to listen and take into account some Palestinians' aspirations for a normal life and even for a peace settlement. In light of the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, however, it seems unlikely that Al-Fateh and Hamas are considering adopting such an approach. Hamas would lose its raison d'être, and Al-Fateh, its youth mouthpiece, would be abandoning the principles of hatred and rejection that are the essence of its religio-political philosophy.

Al-Fateh's doctrinal and educational approach is in clear violation of international educational standards based on various U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization resolutions.[55] By instructing its young audience in hatred and demonization and inciting them to shed blood and commit suicide, Al-Fateh and Hamas trample upon the fundamental rights of children as formulated in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically article 6, which recognizes that every child has the "inherent right to life."[56] Regardless of the U.N.'s tarnished reputation regarding human rights overall, the protection of children from indoctrination into a life of hatred and violence should be supported by all those who claim to advocate for human and children's rights.

 

Yohanan Manor is chairman of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.

Ido Mizrahi is research project coordinator at the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

[1] The New York Times, June 14, 2007.
[2] "Hamas Covenant 1988," Yale Law School Avalon Project, accessed Jan. 28, 2010.
[3] Al-Fateh, June 15, 2009.
[4] Fox News, Aug. 27, 2008; CNS News, Sept. 3, 2009; The Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2009.
[5] Al-Fateh, accessed Feb. 15, 2010.
[6] Palestine Gallery, accessed Feb. 15, 2010.
[7] The Palestinian Information Center, accessed Feb. 15, 2010.
[8] Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York), July 31, 2008.
[9] "Hamas Covenant 1988," art. 11.
[10] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Apr. 1, 2009, Apr. 1, 2008, Apr. 1, 2007, Apr. 1, 2006, Mar. 15, 2005, Nov. 15, 2004, Apr. 15, 2004, Apr. 1, 2004, Dec. 2002, Oct. 2002.
[11] Al-Fateh, Feb. 1, 2006.
[12] Al-Fateh, Oct. 2002.
[13] "Al-Fateh—The Hamas Web Magazine for Children: Indoctrination to Jihad, Annihilation and Self-Destruction," Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), Jerusalem, May 2009.
[14] Al-Fateh, Apr. 15, 2004.
[15] Al-Fateh, July 1, 2004.
[16] Al-Fateh, Sept. 2003.
[17] Al-Fateh, Jan. 1, 2009.
[18] Al-Fateh, Feb. 15, 2009.
[19] Al-Fateh, Jan. 1, 2004.
[20] Al-Fateh, Jan. 2003.
[21] Al-Fateh, May 1, 2004.
[22] Al-Fateh, Feb. 15, 2009.
[23] Al-Fateh, July 2003.
[24] Al-Fateh, May 2003.
[25] Nimrod Hurvitz, "Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib's Semitic Wave Theory and Pan-Arabism," Middle Eastern Studies, Jan. 1993; Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 17.
[26] Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 149.
[27] Al-Fateh, Aug. 1, 2005.
[28] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Aug. 15, 2006, Mar. 1, 2004, Feb. 1, 2004, Apr. 2003, Jan. 2003.
[29] Al-Fateh, Jan. 1, 2005.
[30] "Hamas Covenant 1988," art. 7.
[31] Al-Fateh, Oct. 1, 2002.
[32] Al-Fateh, Feb. 1, 2005.
[33] Al-Fateh, Mar. 15, 2006.
[34] Excerpts from a poem entitled "O God, help the people of Gaza," Al-Fateh, Jan. 15, 2009.
[35] Al-Fateh, Jan. 15, 2009.
[36] Al-Fateh, Jan. 2003.
[37] Al-Fateh, Apr. 2003.
[38] Al-Fateh, Jan. 15, 2009, June 1, 2009, Apr. 15, 2008, Apr. 2003.
[39] Al-Fateh, Apr. 2003, Jan. 15, 2004, July 1, 2004.
[40] See "Philippe Karsenty: 'We Need to Expose the Muhammad al-Dura Hoax,'" Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2008, pp. 57-65.
[41] Al-Fateh, Oct. 15, 2004.
[42] Al-Fateh, Dec. 15, 2003.
[43] Sura 2: 61.
[44] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Aug. 1, 2008; "Save Gaza," Al-Fateh, Jan. 15, 2009.
[45] See sura 2: 65, sura 5: 60, sura 7: 163-6.
[46] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Feb. 15, 2009, Sept. 15, 2005, Mar. 1, 2004, Nov. 15, 2003, Nov. 2002.
[47] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Oct. 15, 2004, July. 2003, Apr. 2003.
[48] Al-Fateh, Apr. 15, 2004.
[49] See, for example, Al-Fateh, Mar. 1, 2005, Sept. 2003, Feb. 2003, Sept. 2002.
[50] Al-Fateh, Oct. 2002.
[51] Al-Fateh, Jan. 15, 2009.
[52] Al-Fateh, Aug. 1, 2008.
[53] Al-Fateh, May 15, 2004.
[54] Al-Fateh June 15, 2004.
[55] Declaration of Principles on Tolerance Proclaimed, UNESCO, Nov. 16, 1995, art. 1, 4.2, 4.3, 5; Integrated Framework for Action on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy, UNESCO, 28th session, Paris, Nov. 1995, art. 9, 18; UNESCO recommendation concerning education for international understanding, cooperation and peace and education relating to human rights and fundamental freedoms, adopted by the General Conference, 18th session, Paris, Nov. 19, 1974, art. III.6, IV.7, III.6, IV.7, V.14, VI.39, VII.39, X.45, in "Impact-SE's Methodology, " fns. 1-8, accessed Mar. 8, 2010.
[56] Convention on the Rights of the Child, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Nov. 1989.

 

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