Six days before a young Palestinian terrorist strapped explosives around his waist and drove his bicycle into an Israeli checkpoint, he was interviewed by a Simon Wiesenthal Center consultant studying the mind-set of radical Islamic terrorists.
In the Nov. 11 attack in the Gaza Strip, 21-year-old Hisham Ismail Hamad obliterated himself and three Israeli soldiers, and wounded 11 other Israelis and Palestinians.
Hamad was among a group of Islamic Jihad militants who talked openly with Kenneth Timmerman about their aims and beliefs. Timmerman is an international security expert who has previously undertaken studies for the Wiesenthal Center on Iraqi chemical warfare capabilities and Iranian and Libyan weapons programs.
The meeting took place on Nov. 5 in an abandoned parking garage in Gaza, near the home of Hani Abed, a Palestinian journalist and suspected terrorist, killed by a car bomb on Nov. 2 Islamic Jihad has blamed Israel for Abed’s death and vowed revenge.
What struck Timmerman, a non-Jew, as “scary” was the ritualistic incitement to hatred of all Jews, at the meeting and in the Gaza streets.
“The streets outside Hani Abed’s mourning house were filled with graffiti and huge banners proclaiming revenge,” reported Timmerman.
“`Yes to martyrdom,’ read one banner. `The slaughter of Jews is our choice to victory,’ read another. `The children of Israel will be the sheep for the butchers of the Islamic Jihad,’ read a third,” said Timmerman.
Inside the meeting place, the hatred of Jews was the most extreme Timmerman had witnessed in many years of talking with Arab militants, he said in a telephone interview.
Hamad told the group that “according to the Torah, the Jews say they are the leaders of nations. But in fact, Israel wants to destroy the world. They want to destroy American society, French society, British society. They want to destroy the whole world. But we believe Israel will be destroyed by Muslims. This is what the Koran says.”
At another point, perhaps anticipating his own death, Hamad said, “Hani Abed, peace be upon him, is blessed today in heaven. He is not dead. No, he is happy. That is why the women are ululating. They are happy because he has given himself to Allah.”
Timmerman preceded the Gaza meeting with interviews in Damascus and Amman with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood.
“In 15 years of covering the (Palestine Liberation Organization), I have never encountered such rank anti-Semitism,” Timmerman said. “For instance, I never heard PLO officials mention `The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ but the Hamas and Islamic Jihad men believe this old czarist forgery is the absolute truth.”
The fight against such terrorists will be long and difficult, said Timmerman.
“The bombers are generally between 14 and 22, without children of their own and without a police record that would make them suspicious to the Israeli authorities,” he said. “Once selected, they are indoctrinated into the ways of sacrifice. Or, if you prefer, prepared like sacrificial lambs for the knife.
“To persuade young men like Hamad to blow themselves up, Islamic Jihad goes to great lengths to separate them from their families, sealing them off in a bubble of hate-filled rhetoric that makes their choice of death seem rational, even sublime.” Timmerman said.
He said he would not presume to advise Israeli and other security services on how to fight the terrorists, but warned that while the supply of suicide bombers was limited, more than a few seemed to be willing.
Islamic Jihad, for instance, has claimed that it is training a suicide brigade of 70 members.
From the longer perspective, Timmerman believes that “the breeding ground of terrorism is the grinding poverty in Gaza,” and with the recent confrontations between PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Islamic extremists, the situation is likely to get worse.
“Only massive infusion of foreign aid and investments will help Gaza residents, but with each new act of violence, foreign investors are scared off, the poverty gets worse and violence increases. It’s a vicious cycle,” said Timmerman.
Timmerman has written a 40-page booklet on his recent interviews in Gaza, Damascus and Amman titled “In Their Own Words” and published by the Wiesenthal Center.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
