Another excerpt from the Lelyveld piece. A very chilling one:
"It's one thing to study a poll that says 78 percent of the people in Gaza support suicide bombing, another to visit a family in which the eldest son and brother has recently achieved martyrdom by obliterating his earthly existence. You might expect to see some small hint of demurral, and occasionally, I'm pleased to report, you do. But I could detect nothing of the kind at the spanking new apartment of a solemnly prideful Bashir al-Masawabi, whose 23-year-old son, Ismail, had blown himself to bits along with two Israeli Army sergeants on June 22, several days before his scheduled graduation from a local university.
The family had been living in a refugee-camp hovel when Ismail became a secret candidate for martyrdom. Now the circumstances of their lives had completely changed. The apartment, spacious by Gaza standards, had plastic grapevines running along the top of tiled walls. Everything in it looked new -- the appliances, rugs and stuffed furniture, the gaudy wall clocks, even the bracelet and rings Ismail's mother was wearing -- all made possible by supporters of Hamas, the organization that recruited Ismail. His father, a glazier, had a haunted look as he told how the community had turned out to congratulate him on his son's advent in paradise. His wife, completely covered except for her hands and her resolutely cheerful countenance, betrayed not a hint of sadness as she spoke of her departed son. ''I was very happy when I heard,'' she said. ''To be a martyr, that's something. Very few people can do it. I prayed to thank God. In the Koran it's said that a martyr does not die. I know my son is close to me. It is our belief.''
Next it was time to view Ismail's farewell video, the ritualistic last testament that the bombers' recruiters shoot hours before the attack, a key stage in the psychological prepping that deepens the candidate's conviction that he is about to perform a great deed for his family, his people and his faith, that he has reached a point of no return. Ismail was shown in the standard mise-en-scene, with his Kalashnikov and his Koran, declaring that his salvation was at hand. Then, all smiles, he was shown dismounting from a jeep. The next scene, taken from Israeli TV, showed ambulances at the scene of his attack. Usually, this would have been the end, but the video now continued with interviews with the young martyr's parents, next to whom I was now standing. As they voiced their pride, the camera panned the new apartment, lingering on the armchairs and the plastic grapevines.
What we were seeing had been broadcast just the day before on Al Manaar, a satellite TV station based in Lebanon that now reaches households throughout the Middle East, despite Israeli attempts to knock it out. Ismail's farewell video, it seemed plain, had been lengthened and re-edited into a recruiting advertisement. It seemed to say: Your family can live like this too."
nytimes.com |
