Effort for Peace in Israel-Palestine (includes faith doubt / pro-peace advocacy)
Dan Fake
complicity of religious differences in a long history of
anti-Jewish efforts to one degree or another (by European
christians and Arab muslims), as well as the evidence that
no god worth worshipping would be involved in that which
has resulted in so much human pain and suffering, please
consider the following:
Preface - This posted as GW is giving a speech to try to
get a peace effort going and to get a pro-peace leadership
in Palestine, a leadership actively opposing terrorism and
actively supporting / insuring the end of violence in the
region in the form of a peaceful Palestinian state existing
side-by-side with a peaceful Israeli state ... 3-year time
table ...
}}}}} Palestinians For Peace {{{{{
---
June 19, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10976-2002Jun19.html
---
- - - begin excerpt - - -
Legislator Hanan Ashrawi and the Palestinians' senior Jerusalem
official, Sari Nusseibeh, were among dozens of prominent Pales-
tinians to sign a full-page newspaper ad urging groups behind
deadly assaults on Israeli civilians to "stop sending our young
people to carry out such attacks."
"We see no results in such attacks, but a deepening of the hatred
between both peoples and a deepening of the gap between us,"
the ad in Al Quds newspaper said.
It urged all Palestinians who support such a call to sign on to it.
Palestinian pollsters have found that a majority of Palestinians
support suicide bombings.
- - - end excerpt - - -
}}}}} Impact of Religious Extremism on Palestinian Terrorism {{{{{
---
Behind the suicide bombers (June 20, 2002)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/19/1023864454350.html
---
- - - begin excerpts - - -
... "To put it simply, we love martyrdom, they love life."
Israel believes the bombers are recruited and indoctrinated through
religious schools run by Hamas and by informal study sessions at
local mosques, led by firebrand preachers.
While the imams of the local mosques are appointed by the Palestinian
Authority - and so are almost never followers of their opponents in
Hamas - religious figures operating on the fringes of the mosques often
preach a far more inflammatory message.
They spread the word to young, highly religious men who often sleep
at the mosque for a night or two each week. They also produce audio
cassettes, sold at the mosques and at private religious schools.
The friends and families of suicide bombers say they killed themselves
as an act of absolute faith: martyrdom, not suicide.
"According to Islam, he will be married to 70 virgins and he will not
be dead. He will be alive with God," says a friend of the first bomber
of this intifada, Nabil Arir. "It is an honour to be able to blow yourself
up this way," says the friend, an activist of Islamic Jihad who says his
name is Mohammed.
Much of the popular support for suicide bombings comes from the
idea of paradise - the just reward for someone who dies for God and
for country. The Koranic verse extolling the sacrifice of martyrs has
been traditionally recited at funerals and engraved on tombstones - long
before the emergence of the suicide bombers.
The association of Palestinian religious scholars gave its sanction to
"martyrdom operations" last year, though it offered no description
of paradise. It said suicide attacks, though not specifically bombings,
were a legitimate part of jihad, or holy war, because they "destroy the
enemy and put fear in the hearts of the enemy, provoke the enemy,
shake the foundations of its establishment and make it think of leaving
Palestine. It will reduce the numbers of Jewish immigrants to Palestine,
and it will make them (Israel) suffer financially".
But the mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdel Aziz al Sheikh, has said
there is no religious sanction for suicide attacks, and the leading cleric
at al Azhar University in Cairo, Mohammed Syed Tantawi, ruled that
attacks aimed at women and children - not just soldiers - could not
be considered the true acts of a martyr.
Selection process
During the first wave of suicide bombings against Israel from 1993 to
1998, and in the first months of this uprising, the bombers were care-
fully selected. Operatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad would keep
an eye on the young men spending time at local mosques and investi-
gate them. Did they pray regularly? Were they emotionally stable? Did
they have financial troubles? How strong was their faith?
Once contact was made, the recruit would be slowly drawn into the
organisation's military network, but the preparation for the actual attack
was long and arduous.
In the old days the bombers disappeared from their homes for up to
a month before the attack for indoctrination sessions, watching videos
of previous bombings. At times they were taken to cemeteries and told
to lie in a grave for several hours to overcome their fear of death.
Such vetting continues, to guard against infiltration by informers for
Israel's security services, and also to make sure the bomber suffers no
change of heart. "He must have full commitment and conviction that
earthly life does not mean anything any more. He has to lose all attach-
ments for property, money and family," says Ali, an Islamic Jihad mili-
tant from Ramallah, who has been involved in organising suicide mis-
sions. "By the end of it all we can read him like a book."
... Jehuda Hiss, the director of Israel's Institute of Forensic Medicine,
which runs extensive tests on the remains of suicide bombers, says
they are fully lucid at the moment of death.
"No alcohol and no drugs known to us," he says. "They are motivated
by some psychological motive prior to the suicide attack."
Financial incentives
The suicide bomber is glorified long after his death. The dead bombers
stare out of posters plastered across the West Bank and Gaza. Their
deeds are extolled in graffiti emblazoned across their houses.
There is also a supremely practical element; the families of the bombers
receive $A50,000 from a Palestinian party aligned with and funded by
Saddam Hussein. Saudi Arabia and Arafat's administration also pay for
the families of bombers (and all Palestinians killed in the uprising) to
make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Such sums may have been in the back of Raed Barghouti's mind when
he disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew and blew himself up outside
the French school in Jerusalem last September, killing only himself. In
the last days of August he began writing out blank cheques for 15,000
shekels ($A5350), his younger brother Ramzi remembers. "I asked him:
'You make 1500 shekels a month. Where did you get the money?' He
said leave it to God."
The money did come, with 70,000 shekels funnelled into the family bank
accounts in the weeks after the attack. Ramzi used the cash to put down
a new patio and floor tiles in the house the brothers were building together,
to install window and door frames and to plaster the walls, which are
adorned in a crimson slogan: "We love the colour of blood."
The planners of the suicide attacks work in distinct cells, operating auto-
nomously from towns and refugee camps in the West Bank. The frag-
mented structure helps to guard against penetration by informers.
Typically, each cell for a suicide bombing - or for other attacks on Israel -
includes a strategist who is linked to the higher tiers of leadership and
who controls finances, an explosives technician who makes the bomb,
a procurer for the belt or vest that will carry it and a driver to deliver it.
The bomber is reduced to a delivery system, especially in Hamas oper-
ations.
But Islamic Jihad and al Aqsa plan their bombings around the local know-
ledge of the suicide attacker, such as familiarity with a certain neighbour-
hood in an Israeli town.
The devices themselves are primitive and cheap: constructed out of fer-
tiliser and sugar imbedded with metal fragments, and packed into a 20-
centimetre piece of plastic tubing. They are light enough - rarely weighing
more than 10 kilograms - and compact enough to be strapped to the
bombers' waists, still the most favoured delivery system.
The tricky part is the planning - selecting the general location for the
attack and finding a route out from the West Bank, whose cities and
refugee camps are encircled by Israeli armour, to the final destination.
None of the attacks in this wave of suicide bombings have originated
from Gaza because Palestinians living in the territory are hemmed in
behind an electronic fence.
In the best-planned and most lethal suicide missions - those by Hamas -
a probe is sent out to locations for a potential attack several days ahead,
taking note of roadblocks along the way and timing the journey, accord-
ing to Israeli security officials. In the more haphazard missions, the
probe is sent out only a few hours before the bombing.
Israel's invasion and reoccupation of the West Bank last April, and its
almost daily short-lived incursions into Palestinian towns since then, has
badly damaged the bombers' networks. The hardened Palestinian com-
manders are in jail or dead. ...
- - - end excerpts - - -
}}}}} Fatah Advocation of the Destruction of Israel {{{{{
---
http://www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm
Article (4) The Palestinian struggle is part and parcel of the world-wide
struggle against Zionism, colonialism and international imperialism.
Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the
Palestinian Arab People's armed revolution is a decisive factor in the
liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle
will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is
completely liberated.
Article (22) Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to
demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine, as well as any project
intended to liquidate the Palestinian case or impose any international
mandate on its people.
---
The statement above reflects the terrorist element and it's up to
the Palestinians interested in peace to actively oppose and oust
those who would seek to commit mass murders upon innocents.
A personal story that I just saw on a news report on TV conveys
the horror of the Palestinian terrorism - I then looked up the story
on the internet. It's so very sad and deplorable, what's taking place
in the intentional, premeditated and insane mass murders of inno-
cents ...
... I submit it's a human obligation to oppose terrorism -and- it's
in the best interest of all to seek peace ...
}}}}} Mass Murders - One Personal Story From a Victim {{{{{
---
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/06/23/vot.terror.one/index.html
---
--- begin excerpt ---
For the Eisenman family, the evening of June 19 started with a
children's concert. After the show, the family was waiting at a
crowded bus stop in northern Jerusalem when a suicide bomber
jumped out of a car and detonated a powerful explosive.
The bomb killed seven people, including 5-year-old Gal Eisenman
and her grandmother Noa Alon, a retired kindergarten teacher.
The little girl's mother, Pnina Eisenman, and her 18-month-old
brother, Saguy, were badly wounded in the blast. Her father, a
doctor, had to identify the body.
[insert summary of some of what was in the TV news
broadcast but not in this article in the same way it was
presented in the TV news broadcast - Pnina's beautiful
5-year old daughter and her mother, were killed. Pnina's
baby son was injured and was saved because Pnina had
him in her arms, partially shielding him from the bomb.
Pnina's face shows scattered hole marks where the small
metal pieces (inserted by the mass murderer to maim/
injure/kill) penetrated her skin. 7 Israeli's were killed in
this mass murder.]
Eisenman said she does not remember the explosion -- only
waking up in a hospital and asking where her children and her
mother were. She said she did not learn what she calls the "cruel
truth" until her husband, Isaac Eisenman, broke the news several
hours later.
Eisenman is still recovering from her wounds -- her left arm was
burned, the other hit by flying pieces of shrapnel, her face was
scarred, her ear drums burst and she suffers constant headaches.
But she said she was glad that she was able to shield Saguy from
the brunt of the explosion.
Once she has healed, she said she would think about having more
children.
Eisenman said her daughter was a perfect, beautiful girl with blonde
curly hair and green eyes. She said her mother knew everything about
her, and they spoke every day.
The Eisenman family tried to take precautions -- avoiding crowded
places and cafes and keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious.
When the intifada began almost two years ago, Isaac Eisenman even
suggested leaving Israel -- but his wife insisted on staying.
Pnina Eisenman said she is now a broken person because of the attack
and said she believes there is no God, because God would not have
taken her most precious things.
[insert - transcript from TV news broadcast in which Pnina
describes her feelings: "... I don't believe in God. My family
believes, my family is religious. I lost my belief many years
ago. This Wednesday I got to the final conclusion that no
God is here, because which God will take me, my most ..."
(voice fades)]
She said she has to keep telling herself that she will never see her
mother or daughter again.
--- end excerpt ---
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dan Fake, Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
http://danfake.home.att.net
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~