Sisters, mothers, martyrs

[Violet_Crumble]

With a few famous exceptions, women in Gaza have long been in the background of the struggle for Palestinian national rights. But suddenly they are on the front line - from politicians and human shields to suicide bombers. Rory McCarthy talks to the women from Hamas.

On the television screen a woman is reading slowly from a sheet of paper held close to her face. The moment is awkward. Her hands shake, she avoids the camera and a large, black M-16 assault rifle hangs from her shoulders. Her head and neck are wrapped tightly in a white scarf.
This is the final message in the life of Fatma al-Najar, widow, great-grandmother, matriarch of her large family and, a few hours after this brief video was shot, the oldest Palestinian to become a suicide bomber. "I am the living martyr Fatma al-Najar," she says, and praises the armed wing of her beloved Hamas movement, its political rulers and its violent struggle.

She says a few words to her family. "I ask my sons to go to the mosque and keep up their prayers and my daughters to survive and not to cry, and to give out sweets." The film stops and restarts and now she is standing without the paper, looking into the camera, behind her still the green flags and insignia of Hamas. An unseen figure prompts her to speak. "I don't know what else to say," she says, smiling nervously. The film is cut.

A few hours later, the 70-year-old arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp, not far from her home in the northern Gaza strip, in the final days of a major Israeli military incursion. She walked towards a group of soldiers. They called her to stop a little way off. One soldier, thinking she looked suspicious, threw a stun grenade. She detonated the belt of explosives around her waist, tearing her body to pieces and slightly injuring three soldiers.

There have been a handful of women among the 120 Palestinian suicide bombers of recent years, and their names are recited on the streets of Gaza in the folklore of Palestinian martyrdom. But the past few weeks have seen a remarkable injection of women's activism into the fight. In this conservative and patriarchal society the militancy has previously been almost entirely dominated by men. Now that is changing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1964048,00.html

[GreenZoneLT]

1. Interesting take on this in "The Tipping Point."

Suicide bombing is a real cultural disease among Palestinians, and among Muslim jihadists more generally. It's not effective in terms of making any military or political progress, and it's almost never seen in any other guerilla resistance. It's like a fad that has taken hold, and has a momentum of its own. The epidemic of teen suicide in Micronesia is similar.

I notice that it's old women and teenagers who are doing it among women. Mothers have too much to live for, I guess.