Suicide bomber identified as grandmother
JABALYA, Gaza, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A Gaza suicide bomber who detonated a bomb near Israeli troops has been identified as the first grandmother to carry out such an attack.

Fatma Omar A-Najar, who died carrying out the attack Thursday, was the mother of nine children and a grandmother to more than 40, Ha'aretz reported Friday.

The newspaper said Najar, a widow, had visited with her children Thursday morning and left her home around noon without telling her family where she was going.

"A martyr's death is permitted for all, women and men." Najar's son, Jihad, said after the attack.

"She couldn't remain indifferent to the occupation: the destruction, the death, the invasions of Gaza, all of these pushed her to carry out an 'act of sacrifice,'" he said.

"She participated in women's marches in Beit Hanoun to protect the militants in Nasser mosque, and participated in many Hamas activities," he said. "She brought great honor to us and the homeland. She connected all of us to the struggle."

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"She brought great honor to us and the homeland."

Is this guy kidding me with that statement? His grandmother just blew herself up in and attempt to kill others and he looks upon her act of terrorism as bringing honor to his family? Talk about a sick and twisted family.



Don Cardi

There really are people over there that think this way (honor to die for what they believe). The sooner our leaders here in the U.S. realize that, the sooner we'll be better to deal with the situation over there.

Maybe she went to get her 72 virgins

Well, Jews used to blow themselves up and were considered when they took Palestine, so why can't it work the other way around?

Anyone who blows themselves up in an attempt to take as many others with them as possible is not wired straight, IMO. It doesn't matter what race or religion they are.

SC's right. The sooner we strategize with that in mind, the better.

People blowing themselves up is not the cause of the problem, it is a symptom

I agree SC. I've said many times in past discussions that our leaders may be approaching this with the wrong strategy. The problem is what IS the right answer? How do we deal with the problem of people who are willing to blow themselves up? These kinds of barbarians are causing problems all over the world.


Don Cardi

People fight and die all the time for what they believe in whether what they believe in is right or wrong. If Palestinians don't want to accomplish their goal of a Palestinian homeland through negotiation, then let them fight for it. If that includes blowing themselves up, the so be it.

The tragedy is that the Palestinians are relatively uneducated and deprived of any substantive polemic that fairly represents both sides. In other words, they don't have substantive knowledge of alternatives to violence. When I was in Vietnam I never interrogated a Viet Cong that could talk intelligently about comparative economic and poitical systems. They were fighting white skinned invaders that they couldn't tell from the French and for their land. That's all they knew.

Its not that they're blowing themselves up. That's a symptom of the problem. The US doesn't have to learn how to deal with people who blow themselves up. That's not the issue.

The issue is why these people blow themselves up. What caused this woman to blow herself up?

That's the issue that must be addressed, not learning how to deal with suicide bombers.

They blow themselves up because they think that will somehow bring the emergence of a Palestinian state that much closaer. On the other hand, they may feel helpless and that they just want to destroy whoever they see as the enemy and they are willing to be killed to do so. I don' think there is much figuring to it. Of course, once a Palestinian state is achieved, that doesn't necessarily end things. Some Palestinians believe that all the land occupied by Israel is their land. So, the bombings will go on.

Olivant, I think that we have a pretty good idea as to why these people blow themselves up, as you yourself have made some very valid points as to the reason that they do these things.

I believe that it is a combination of uneducation, as you correctly pointed out, and brainwashing fanatacism that causes these people to carry out these acts of terrorism. Most of them have been brainwashed by the fanatical extremists who advocate the destruction of the western world. These extremists have convinced these people that acts of terrorism are good in the eyes of their God. These people believe this rhetoric and many of them are poor and uneducated people who are easily brainwashed by these extremist fanatics.

So the issue here really isn't why they blow themselves up, but rather an issue of how we stop them from blowing themselves up. What do you think can be done to convince these people that blowing themselves up is not the answer to what they are really trying to acheive? Does the western world need to educate these people in some way? Do we start out by ridding the world of the extremist fanatics that convince these people that suicide bombing is an act of honor? What is the answer? What's your opinion?



Don Cardi

You stop them from blowing themselves up by understanding where they are coming from, not throwing western ideas at them.

They're human beings, not barbarians. Palestinians got the shaft. That's a fact.

You're pushing an extremist agenda also, but from the opposite end DC.

To stop them from blowing themselves up, they need basic human respect, even though some people think that Palestinians are less than human. Because that's what a barbarian is by definition- less human than the "civilized" world.

In order to stop them, people need to understand them

To use a phrase of Don Vito's, you can't reason with them. The ideology is so ingrained, drilled into them from youth, that it's impossible to change their mind. The destruction of human life, ANY human life, is wrong, IMO. Be it by suicide bombing or by any other means. I agree that trying to change that way of thinking to what we consider "right" is impossible. However, unless they would try to understand us, how can we try to understand them?

That's not the way too look at it.

You, personally, did not choose to be born in America. Palestinians did not choose to be born in a rat hole like Palestine.

They're obviously upset that their ancestors had they're land stolen by the west.

It was stolen. Many people who deplore what Palestinians do forget that Jews did the same things back in the 40's.

They're born into a crappy place that was made even more crappy by the UN. Where is the UN located? The United States.

So, logically, the UN deprived them of their homeland and the UN is headquartered in the US and the US is a founding member of the UN...

So, logically, they don't like the US. That's not even including all the bad foreign policies the US has used in the region, which just made things worse.

The simple solution is to stop propping up Israel while condemning Syria and Iran for propping up Palestine. Its hypocritical.

I say the US should stay the hell out of it and let the people in the region figure out their own problems

Difficult, not possible, as his son said. And it's not as if we've tried, is it?

The only well documented terrorist(?) bombing of a civilian target by the Israelis during the 40s was the bombing of the King David hotel. However,that hotel was also being used by the British as a military facility. The Israelis did not blow themselves up and they did not target civilians and they did not use women, and they certainly did not use grandmothers.

The Israelis have as much claim to Palestine as anyone else. Israel is a democracy. Even Turkey and Egypt are only erstwhile democracies while Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, the Emirates (need I go on) are dictatorships or oligarchies almost since time immemorial. So not only is my money on Israel but my support goes to Israel also.

As far as a solution goes: Don Corleone believed that a man has only one destiny; I believe that some problems cannot be solved and this may be one. The only progress the US can make in the Middle East will come from continuing to support Israel and doing what it did about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union - keep imbuing Middle Eastern inhabitants with western ideas about democracy, civil rights and civil liberties, government of the people, by the people, and for the people, free markets, the sanctity of life, and the use of government to enhance human existence, not constrain it.

Human beings don't go around blowing themselves up in an attempt to kill innocents and civilians. Human beings don't sell there kids to extremists so that they can become suicide bombers. Those kinds of acts are the acts of a barbarian mentality.




That's not fact, it's opinion.




Human respect? How many times have human beings attempted to broker peace treaties and deals on their behalf. Yet they refuse to show any repect to humnaity as a whole. There is no room for giving human respect to people that refuse it whenever it has been offered.





Democracy is an extremist agenda? Have we pushed an extremist agenda by blowing up innocents, children and civilians through the use of suicide bombing tactics?





See Olivants response to this falsehood that you insist on repeating everytime this kind of an issue arises.





I say that the U.S. should continue to back Israel because the Palestinians have never been able to figure out their own problems. Instead they've blamed everyone else for their problems but themselves. This is a people that elects known terrorists and terrorist supporters to lead them. No civilized nation should ever stand by and allow a terrorist nation to threaten a democracy.

They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.



Don Cardi

"Maybe so--but it occured to me. The soldiers are paid to fight--the rebels aren't."


"What does that tell you....?"

My compliments to ALL those here for arguing this in an adult, intelligent manner.

(The "Godfather" references are an added bonus).

Human beings do blow themselves up DC.

Palestinians didn't get the shaft? How about the fact most of them are living in refugee communities that are now 60 years old. Sounds like the shaft to me.

The US continues to kill people with no respect for human life. Ever since after WWII, every major action the US has been involved in has turned into a pit of money and death with no positive results.

You're extremist agenda is evident in your posts. You obviously do not take the issue seriously. You refer to them as "barbarians." I don't need to explain this

I'm not talking just about Jewish suicide bombers. I'm talking about the terrorist attacks they committed in general.

Palestinians did have their own problems figured out until the US backed an aggressor and all the native Palestinians were shit on by foreign nationals pouring out of Europe after the war. So the use of "never" is misleading.

Palestinians have more claim than Israelis. Israelis are mostly decedents of foreign nationals that invaded the territory. Their invasion never would have succeeded without US and UK aid.

Its a foreign government that does not belong there. Did the Palestinians deserve their fate at the hands of western powers? Hell no.

This would be like Canadians forcing an armed settlement in Texas just because they wanted to. Texans would bitch, but the Canadians would hold on in a BS way.

It is unfortunate that Double-J is no longer with us. He could have surely directed this debate in a more fruitful manner

You need to do some research and get your facts straight. First of all, Jews are Palestinians. Their ethnic ancestry and habitation in Israel goes back to Biblical times along with alot of other peoples such as the Caanites, Moabites, Ammonites, etc.. It was the Chaldeans who deported most of the Jews from Israel to the east in 586 BC. Since before 1948, they have been returning home. You may remember that Mohammad and his followers came from the Arabian peninsula, not Palestine. It was they that captured Jerusalem in 638 AD, hardly natives.

There are over 1 million arabs in Israel, almost 4 million in the West Bank, and over 2 million in the Gaza. Their ancestry is largely Seljuk originating in the Steppes of central asia. So, you might want to be careful about attributing origins.

Cardi's points are well taken.

More native than the European Jews.

You're confusing "Israeli" with "Israelite"

They both are Semitic people. They are not both Palestinian.

You may also want to be careful on confusing "Israeli" with "Israelite" which any historian will tell you are two different groups of people that happen to be Jewish. Certainly, there were Jews of Greek or Roman descent and converts. They were not "Israelites" even though their descendants are "Israeli"

EDIT- Palestinians converted to Islam. The religion may not be native, but the people are

Yes, and when Israel gained control of the Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights during the six day war of 1967, many blond haired, blue eyed 'Israelis' ran across the border to reclaim their homeland.

Not human beings by my definition. I guess that's where you and I differ. You seem to accept this type of behavior as a normal act of a human being. I don't. My feeling is that anyone who is willing to blow themselves up in an attempt to kill innocent civilians, children, etc. should not be treated as a human being.




Really? Care to give us some examples? The only one that I'll give you on that is Vietnam. But I do not see where any other conflict that the U.S. has been involved in has turned into one that has not produced postive results.





Interesting thing to say. What have I said or done that would qualify me as an extremist? Have I said that we should Nuke the bastards? Have I said that we should send our own suicide bombers into their communities to wipe out their woman and children? All I have actually done here is to provoke some discussion and in our discussion I have asked what others think needs to be done to try and stop these acts of terrorism.




As another member posted here, you need to get your facts straight. The issue of who's land it really is has been debated here several times in the past. I believe that the only thing that everyone seemed to agree on at the time was that it really comes down to one's own beliefs and if they consider biblical history a part of the equation.





I am going to take that comment as one made in the heat of the debate in general, and not one made with the intent to provoke any kind of personal debate between us. You've been here for a little over a year Johnny, you have absolutely no idea whatsoever how seriously I take these issues, especially when it comes to acts of terrorism.





Don Cardi

Cardi,
I'm mixing metaphors here, which is always dodgy business and often misunderstood, so bear with me. Either way, this is going to be obscure, perhaps irrelevant, and feel free to reject my argument - I'm not sure if I'm fully convinced of it myself.

...But what do you think about films which sympathise with these so-called "non-humans"? Such as, say, Paradise Now? You may not have seen it, but you get the jist when you read synopses, about two suicide bombers in Palestine chosen for a mission in Israel the following day. Are the intentions of that film also lacking definition enough to be graded human?

The human condition is far from black-and-white. With that I'm sure you'll agree. In fact I think humans in general are weak and fickle. It's clear that, self-truth aside (which is a whole other debate), these suicide bombers have been "morally warped", so to speak, corrupted from having been born with the potential to care, love and be generous, but for whatever reason have been nurtured into following a system of beliefs which happen to oppose anything which might prove dangerous to their idea of "freedom".

What is it, then, to be "human"? What constitutes a human being? Is it something to do with moral ethics? Political beliefs? Somebody who doesn't eat meat?

Or somebody who simply doesn't kill other people?

Capo, I canot say that I have seen that movie. Perhaps it is one that I should add to my list. And I respect that you have approached this discussion with an open mind and have responded to what's been said with both legitimate points and questions.

You ask "What constitutes a human being?"

Well in the context of what's being discussed in this topic, I will answer your question to the best of my ability. Although I don't profess to have the right answer, I believe that I have an idea as to what a human being is pertaining to this issue.


While I agree that it is not a black and white issue, I do believe that there are certain parameters that constitute a 'basic' (for lack of a better word) understanding of what it means to be human. Sort of a foundation if you may.

Human beings are usually known for their desire to understand and influence the world around them and what goes on in it. And with that desire should come an exchange of ideas through civilized communication. The human being is intelligent enough to understand and know that a society must exist which consists
of laws, ethics and values that form a basis for living in that society.

Yes, a human being could have different religious beliefs and ideas than the next person has, but tolerance and respect need to exist between them. Tolerance and respect are qualities that are a part of being a human being.

Compassion is also a part of the makeup of being a human being.
It is a trait that a real human being will have towards others.
A human being holds the lives of others in high regard and does not view that other persons life as being a meaningless one in order to suit their own cause.

A human being does not act like an animal and throw all values and ethics out the window by taking human lives at will. Animals have no regard for life, humans should.

Yes it is true that during war, human lives on both sides of a conflict are taken and lost, and it is horrible. However even in war their exists a sense of ethics and parameters that both sides try to live by. An unwritten rule that the warring factions follow in attempting to keep the battle between those who are fighting on the front lines. An attempt, not always a successful one mind you, to keep from killing innocents and civilians that are not part of the front line war itself.

But in a case like this one, the suicide bomber shows no compassion, does not hold human life in a high regard, and does not care about the lives of innocent children or civilians. The suicide bomber shows absolutely no traits of being a human being because, like an animal, their mentality is one which encompasses their OWN beliefs and their OWN ideals, and does not consist of tolerance or respect towards others, which is part of being a real human being. So like a wild animal they arbitrarily set out to justify their cause by taking the lives of those who do not adhere to their ideas and beliefs. Like an animal they have this idea that their own kind should be the only ones that exist in the world, and that their is no room for anyone else who does not adhere to their way of thinking and their way of life.

To me, those kind of actions and that way of thinking does not make up what a human being really is.




Don Cardi

Her son Jihad???

Doesn't that mean "holy war"?

Make of that what you will. Unbelievable.

Signor V.

Biblical equation!? How the hell do can you say you're not biased and not pushing an agenda?

That's an absurd reason to give a religion land. Not a people, a religion. As I have explained, the Jews of today are not "Israelites," making any biblical reasoning null and void

Here's a clue-

Europeans lost the Crusades, the land went to indigenous people. Then Jews flooded in from Europe, fought a war with US and UK backing, killed people and established a government

The people there responded by fighting back and have turned to blowing themselves up. I can list many examples of westerners doing worse that are considered OK today even though they were atrocities

Not produced positive results? Korea, Desert Storm...

Any argument constructed around Palestinians not being human beings is flawed and wrong