Blessed Be The Martyrs

We're informed that Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, using all means at their disposal in their battle for a Tamil homeland, perfected the concept of the suicide bomber. It was a Tamil suicide bomber who assassinated then-Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991. The Tamil Tigers are now effectively out of commission as a threat, although they are attempting to return, and yet may, just as the Taliban have.

The Palestine Liberation Army under its co-founder Yasser Arafat, which was also invested in its own battle for its homeland, (although it soundly rejected a United Nations' Partition plan, unwilling to share the geography with the new State of Israel in 1948) used some extraordinary measures like well-publicized plane high-jacking to establish its dissatisfaction with the presence of Israel in what they maintained was land belonging to Palestinian Arabs.

The Second Intifada took place after the signing of the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David, presided over by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, when Ehud Barak, then-Israeli Prime Minister and PA chairman Yasser Arafat co-signed the agreement to prepare the Palestinians for statehood. Under pressure from the militant wing of Fatah Yasser Arafat decided not to complete the process and called on Palestinians to take part in the first Intifada which saw a good deal of stone-throwing, stabbing, shooting and bombing of Israeli targets.

Earlier, the period, of the First Intifada, from 1987 to 1993 gave birth to the first suicide attack when a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad boarded a Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus, disrupting the driver's driving so the bus fell into an abyss killing 16 people. When the Intifada ended, the first suicide bombing tactic was undertaken by Palestinian militants in 1992 which Hamas directed when an explosives-laden car was voluntarily detonated between two buses.

("Twelve men, led by a woman called Dalal Al-Mughrabi, managed to establish the State of Palestine, after the whole world had denied them their right to do so," declared Al-Jazeera TV host Ghassan Bin-Jiddo in a 2008 retrospective of the four-hour 'State of Palestine' in 1978.

"They turned a bus en route from Haifa to Tel Aviv, into a temporary capital of the State of Palestine. They raised the white, red, and black flag at the front of the bus, singing, shouting, and dancing like children on a school trip. When the Zionist forces surrounded them - with the help of helicopters - and wanted to storm the bus, they blew up the bus with themselves inside."

"Bin-Jiddo neglected to mention, even in passing, the 12 children and 25 adults Al-Mughrabi and her comrades murdered in cold blood on March 11, 1978. They shot an American photographer named Gail Rubin, carjacked a taxi, murdered the driver and his passengers, shot at traffic on the highway, hijacked two buses, and ultimately blew up the last bus - with all passengers aboard.")**

Palestinians were inspired from that time forward to ever greater exploits in their terrorism exploits against Israel, until finally the State of Israel began erecting a containment wall to exclude unwanted guests crossing over from the Territories into Israel, successfully eliminating most other attacks, at which time rockets became the preferred method of Palestinian terrorists expressing their undying loathing for their 'oppressors' and 'occupiers'.

It took a Saudi Arabian social elite billionaire's son to build on that concept of suicide bombing. Instead of well-loaded suicide vests, he dreamed up the idea of combining the Palestinians' high-jacking tactics with their suicide bombing, and changed the world as we know it today. The gruesome success of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and the failed Pennsylvania deaths inspired other recruits to the al-Qaeda jihadist network.

Volunteers, excited and determined to become honoured martyrs to be blessed in Paradise with the servitude of plentiful virgins, stepped forward in their passionate numbers. Even women succumbed to the allure of pleasing Allah, and sacrificing themselves for a higher purpose, knowing the praise and adulation that would be bestowed upon them after the fact, and that their families would inherit state-bestowed annuities in perpetuity.

And thus was born a new reign of terror with dread horrors raining down from the skies, and in the plenitude of their success, inspiring those who saw it as their religious duty to perform the height of altruistic servitude to their faith. All delusional, violence-prone fanatics may apply.

**online at ArutzSheva, 16 September 2011