Creating a supportive social environment for terrorists has been a critical factor in the Palestinian Authority's successful promotion of suicide terrorism. To this end, PA policy has been to honor terrorists as Shahids (Martyrs for Allah), and to teach Palestinian mothers to celebrate when their children die as terrorist Shahids. Categorizing these dead terrorists as Shahids grants them the highest honor a Muslim can achieve, and is therefore cause for a mother to celebrate, according to this PA teaching.

This pressure on Palestinian mothers to celebrate their dead sons as Shahids continues under the regime of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and even increased this past week with repeated PA TV promotion connected to International Woman's Day.

Preaching before an audience that included Abbas, Sheikh Yusuf Juma' Salamah said in Friday's sermon on PA TV that the ideal Palestinian woman is like Al Khansah, the heroine of Islamic tradition who celebrated her four sons' death in battle by thanking God for the honor. Salamah, the PA Minister of Waqf, quoted Al Khansah: "Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths." [PA TV, March 11, 2005]

This was the first Friday sermon broadcast since the PA announced in March 2005 that it would control and vet all Friday sermons delivered in West Bank and Gaza strip mosques. This portrayal of the ideal Palestinian woman as one who willingly sacrifices her sons as Shahids, therefore, continues to represent official PA ideology ― especially since this sermon was delivered in the presence of Abbas.

Two days later, PA TV broadcast a theatrical skit that included veneration of the same Al Khansah. A father taught his son her declaration: "Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths." [PA TV, March 13, 2005]

Promoting the Al Khansah ideal for Palestinians is a very powerful message for Muslims. Al Khansah was a poet in the early Islamic period. Before she converted to Islam, her brothers died, and she grieved. However, Islamic historian Ibn Athir writes that after she converted to Islam, she delivered a fiery speech encouraging her four sons to march into battle for Allah. When all four were killed, the poem she wrote was one of joy, rejoicing that Allah had honored her with the deaths of her sons.

From a very young age, Palestinian girls are taught to adopt Al Khansah as a role model with her message of celebrating death in combat - which in contemporary Palestinian society includes death while committing acts of suicide terror. A music video for children, broadcast hundreds of times over three years on PA TV, included the farewell letter of a child Shahid, including the words: "Mother don't cry for me, be joyous over my blood."

In addition, the Palestinian Authority has named at least five girls schools "the Al Khansah School for Girls," in Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Han Yunis and Rafah. [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Jan. 9, 2005]

Resistance

The other side of the coin is that criticism has been leveled against endangering the lives of school children, and especially against sending young people on suicide missions. The criticism comes from officials in the PA, the children's families, and figures in the Palestinian media. For example:

▪ The families of the three teenagers sent to carry out a shooting attack in Afula (26 February 2004) and senior PA officials expressed anger at the dispatching of the boys. Palestinian minister Saab Ariqat said (AP, Nablus), "Our children should be our hope and future; they must not turn into suicide terrorists. We want them to be doctors or engineers." The family of one of the boys, Tarek Abu Mahsan, were infuriated that the Islamic Jihad of Palestine recruited the three for a mission that would almost certainly have led to their deaths. Regarding the letter left by the three, the boy's mother, Amira Abu Mahsan, noted that "my son doesn't know how to write a letter like that and has never belonged to one of the organizations. Some grownup wrote the letter for him" (AP, Nablus).

▪ The family of Ayad el-Masri, a 17-year-old student killed near Jinspot, published an unusual announcement in the newspaper el-Ayyam (14 January 2002) demanding an investigation of the circumstances of their son's death. The family expressed their opposition to sending their son on the mission, described his death as "a senseless death that raises legitimate questions" and claimed that their son "was sent to carry out a hopeless suicide attack, the consequences of which were known from the outset."

The Mother-and-Son Farewell Video

Most suicide terror attacks are preceded by a parting ceremony recorded on video. One such ceremony of a 17-year-old, before his suicide mission in which he killed 5 Israeli teenagers, featured the encouragement and full complicity of his mother. The video was broadcast on Arab News Network TV, March 2002.

[Narrator]: "In a silence filled with tears, with a mother's warm longing, his mother hugged him good-bye at length planting the parting kiss on his cheeks before their final parting. Ordering him not to not to return to her except as a Shahid. Seeing this [parting] is more than words. The last moments of Um-Nidal with her son, the youngest [age 17] Shahada-Seeker, The newest General, to join the ranks of Shahada-Seeker.

[The mother after he was killed]: "I gave my son to Jihad for Allah. It is a our religious obligation. If I wanted to have compassion for him, or to make him to change his mind, it would be wrong, a mistake. I don't want to be guided by my feeling, a mother's feelings. I put them aside for a while for something greater. Although this is connected to a mothers feelings. Why? Because I love my son and I want to choose the best for him and the best is not life in this world. No, for us there is an afterlife, the eternal bliss. So if I love my son, I will choose eternal bliss for him."

More Examples of Parents Supporting Child Terror

▪ Hamas terrorist Muhammad Farhat murdered five Israelis in the Atzmona religious school, on March 3, 2002. Farhat's mother, Um-Nidal, encouraged her son to go on the bombing mission, and she was proudly photographed with her son before he was sent on his suicide mission.

Farhat's mother appealed to other mothers in a published letter that urged them to follow in her footsteps. Following are excerpts from the letter:

Oh my fellow Muslim sisters. I swear by Allah, that you must educate your son to love Allah and obey him. Plant the seed of belief deep in his heart.

Educate him, my sister, in the love of Jihad (Holy War on the non-believers) and self sacrifice until death, for Allah's sake 'I beseech you my sisters, women of Palestine who stand strong, do not be stingy with the fruit of your womb in the face of Allah. (i.e. do not prevent your children from going on homicide/suicide bombings.) He who holds my soul in his hand (Allah) is more merciful than us on them (the children). Do not deprive them, out of your own selfishness, of the heaven which Allah has promised to the martyrs and Muj'hadin (Fighters of Jihad). This is our happiness'

▪ Interview with the mother of two killed terrorists - PA TV, November 17, 2004.

Host: They [Israelis] accuse the Palestinian mother of hating her sons and of encouraging them to die.

Mother: No. We do not encourage our sons to die. We encourage them to shahada [death for Allah] for the homeland, for Allah. We don't say to the mothers of the shahids, 'We come to comfort you,' rather, 'We come to bless you on your son's wedding, on your son's shahada. Congratulations to you on the shahada.' For us, the mourning is a [joyous] wedding. We give out drinks, we give out sweets. Praise to Allah, our mourning is a [joyous] wedding.

▪ A suicide bomber's imaginary letter to his mother - Al Hayat Al Jadida, official Palestinian Daily, Feb. 27, 2003. A poem, written as an imaginary letter from a suicide bomber to his mother, glorifies and idealizes every action of his murder and suicidal death.

My Dear Mother, ...I wrapped my body with determination, with hopes and with bombs. I asked [reaching] towards Allah and the fighting homeland. The [explosive] belt makes me fly, strengthens me to make haste. I calm it [the explosive], we should stay steadfast, we have not yet reached. I freed/launched myself; I freed/launched myself, [detonated myself] like lava burning old legends and vanity, I freed/launched my body, all my pains and oppression, towards the packs of beasts... I freed/launched, oh mother, freed the chains and the shackles.

▪ Palestinian mother proudly prayed for her son to die, during her pilgrimage [Haj] to Mecca - PA TV Dec. 5, 2002. Excerpts from television interview:

"[My second son Naji] became a Shahid on Mar. 23, 2002, at the age of 20. Before I made my pilgrimage [to Mecca], he put his hands on my head and said: "Be calm, mother, be calm, this is my wish. Pray for me, that I will be a Shahid [Die for Allah]." When I did the circuit [an Islamic pilgrimage ceremony], in Mecca and Medina, I swear to Allah, that I prayed for him... And said: Praise Allah, my children asked for Shahada, and it is better than the way we will die. Their death is for Allah, death for our country, death for our Jerusalem …"

▪ In a candid interview on PA TV (PATV, May 4, 2003), the Director of the Palestinian "Children's Aid Association," an agency whose function is to help children, stated that as education policy with other values, Palestinians teach their children to aspire to Death for Allah - Shahada. Transcript of remarks by Firial Hillis of the Palestinian Children's Aid Association:

"The concept of Shahada for him [the child] means belonging to the homeland, from a religious point of view. Sacrifice for his homeland. Achieving Shahada in order to reach Paradise and to meet his God. This is the best. We also teach our children to protect the homeland, belonging and to reach Shahada."

▪ On March 5, 2003, Mahmoud Hamdan Kwasma blew up a bus in Haifa, killing 15 Israelis, many of them school children. The suicide bomber was 20 years old. His mother ("the Um Shadi") praised her son's deeds. The following appeared on Islamic Jihad's official website:

The women swarmed around the Um Shadi, mother of Mahmoud Hamdan Kwasma, who carried out the suicide bombing on Wednesday in Haifa. They had come in order to praise her for the death of her son in the service of Allah.

In the Kwasma household, situated on the first floor of a building in the Alsheikh neighborhood in the city of Hebron, the Um Shadi served sweet coffee and 'Knaffe' (a sweet pastry eaten at celebrations).

The Um Shadi went on to say, "I am proud of my son's deed, we must fight for our faith and not for our nation (the Palestinian nation)."

Mothers who send their sons off to perpetrate such acts gain recognition from organizations like Hamas, who give them the title "Hanas" - women who have attained a sacred level in Islam after (in the time of Mohammad the prophet) having sent four children to fight the infidels until death.

Hamas uses these women in television interviews and in internet discussion forums to encourage other mothers to send their sons to perpetrate suicide attacks.