The boys of Yassin - Guest column

On March 24, Hussam Abdu, a 16 year-old Palestinian boy, was paid 100 shekels (the equivalent of $23) by Fatah, a terrorist organization associated with Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, to be a suicide bomber. As he approached a checkpoint just south of Nablus, he was asked by Israeli soldiers to remove an oversized jersey, revealing an eight kilogram suicide belt underneath. The soldiers, the very same soldiers whom he had sought to murder, saved his life by sending a remote-controlled robot to the boy to deactivate his suicide belt.

Just days earlier, a 10 year-old boy was caught at the same checkpoint with a bag, inside of which was hidden a 10 kilogram bomb. The boy, who was paid to help transport the deadly contents through the checkpoint, was apparently unaware that the bomb was inside the bag.

As soon as these stories broke, I spoke about the two incidents to my friend David Rodwin, a self-proclaimed liberal and a Hopkins junior studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for the semester. While remaining a staunch supporter of Israel, he has always argued against Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza and remains opposed to some of the methods implemented by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Rodwin said the following about the propensity of Palestinian terrorists to train and exploit children as suicide bombers and active accomplices to terrorism: "This incident is emblematic of several notions. First, the militant organizations' lack of concern for the lives of the Palestinian youth for whom they claim to be fighting. Second, the extent to which the desire to become a shaheed -- a martyr for the cause of liberating Palestine -- has taken a hold of the Palestinian population living in the West Bank and Gaza." Although many in the West are horrified by this ever increasing phenomenon, few have made the link between the recent assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and leader of the terrorist organization Hamas, and the rampant abuse of Palestinian children by terrorist perpetrators.

While the killing of this influential Hamas leader has led to an enormous outcry and massive protests throughout the Middle East, the disturbing events of March 24 have received much less attention -- maybe because they have become so common they no longer shock the civilized world. The media is largely responsible for this. While painting a sympathetic picture of Yassin, often portraying him as a "spiritual leader," the media rarely notes that his Holiness personally encouraged innocent Palestinian men, women and children, like Hussam Abdu, to become suicide bombers and to kill innocent Israeli civilians until the entirety of Palestine was free of Jews.

After all, it was Yassin who opposed any peace with Israel, arguing instead for what he called a holy struggle. "Make no mistake, there will be no peace as long as there is a Zionist-Jewish state. Our holy goal is to liberate all of Palestine, and if the Jews do not go, they will die. All of Palestine is Islamic land -- every inch," he said in a 1988 interview with journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff. As Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Sofer has correctly asserted: "[Yassin] was not a spiritual leader. This term does injustice to the term "spiritual leader' and an insult to real spiritual leaders. He was a terrorist mastermind."

Unfortunately, many in the West believe that there is a distinction between the "military" and the "political" branch of Hamas. Few have stepped up and called a spade a spade: when imams, like Yassin, deliberately target young impressionable children in prayers to "give themselves up to shaheed," their "spiritual guidance" is no less of a crime than the hideous atrocities committed by the children they manipulate.

While it is safe to assume that most in the West are horrified at the prospect of 10 and 16 year-olds becoming terrorists, most are unable, unwilling or simply averse to accepting the fact that, in many respects, much of Palestinian society emphasizes and glorifies death in a way which makes martyrdom attractive. Somehow, citizens of wealthy and prosperous nations cannot accept that Palestinian society, television, posters, school textbooks and official declarations by government officials like Arafat and religious edicts by Imams portray suicide, and in effect, murder, as an act to aspire to. As Hussam Abdu later declared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "[I wanted] to be a hero."

If the West deplores young kids like Abdu aspiring to be martyrs, it must not condemn Israel for killing manipulative, murderous, "spiritual leaders" like Yassin -- who are themselves responsible for actively promoting terrorist activity.

Ultimately, both the Palestinians and the Israelis are responsible, to some degree, for this frightening phenomenon. By creating difficult, harsh and at time humiliating conditions for Palestinians to live in, Israel has allowed for such radical ideologies to escape from the fringes into the mainstream "pop" culture of Palestinian society. Until Israel completely separates itself from the Palestinian people, whether it is through unilateral withdrawal, a fence or a bilateral agreement, influential Palestinian extremists will coerce the young and impressionable minds of Palestinian children into committing inhumane acts.

Ilya Bourtman is the Coalition of Hopkins Activists for Israel liason to Hopkins Hillel.