Word: martyres
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...evolved since Nabulsi made his debut in the role. Today he is deadlier and requires less coercion. He used to be easy to describe: male, 17 to 22 years of age, unmarried, unformed, facing a bleak future, fanatically religious and thus susceptible to Islam's promise of a martyr's place in paradise, complete with the affections of heaven's black-eyed virgins. Today's bomber no longer fits the profile...
These days Palestinians celebrate the suicides in newspaper announcements that read, perversely, like wedding invitations. "The Abdel Jawad and Assad families and their relatives inside the West Bank and in the Diaspora declare the martyrdom of their son, the martyr Ahmen Hafez Sa'adat," reads a March 30 notice for the 22-year-old killer of four Israelis in a shooting attack. Palestinian children play a game called "Being a Martyr," in which the "martyr" buries himself in a shallow grave. And the job of bomber comes with established cash bonuses and health benefits for the surviving family. How else...
...with the breakdown of the peace process in the summer of 2000 and the start of the latest intifadeh that September, the martyr wannabes started coming to Hamas--and they didn't require persuading. "We don't need to make a big effort, as we used to do in the past," Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas' senior leaders, told TIME last week. The TV news does that work for them. "When you see the funerals, the killing of Palestinian civilians, the feelings inside the Palestinians become very strong," he explained...
...weeks ago, my sister, a professional and a mother of four, was visibly shaken as she watched, on television, Israeli tanks torturing the streets of a refugee camp and soldiers raping its homes. She shocked us all when she declared that she would like to become a martyr. A few hours later, a young Palestinian woman stunned the world when she turned herself into a human bomb and exploded in Jerusalem, killing one Israeli and wounding 150 others. In the weeks after, more women joined the queue of suicide bombers as the world stood alarmed and bewildered...
...every case of martyrdom, there is a personal story of tragedy and trauma. A curious journalist once asked me to introduce him to a potential martyr. When the journalist asked, "Why would you do it?" he was told, "Would you fight for your country or not? Of course you would. You would be respected in your country as a brave man, and I would be remembered as a martyr...