On a rutted street in Gaza City, young men idle by wall spray-painted with a chilling image: a bus bursting like a firecracker.  Across the way is the youth’s favorite haunt – not a pool hall but a house of worship.  The mosque is the principal local shrine, the Islamic movement whose military wing took responsibility for the Jerusalm and Ashkelon bombings.

The Tel Aviv bloodbath was the work of the even more militant Islamic Jihad.  Until the Palestine Authority’s post- bombing crackdown put most Hamas operations out of business, the Organization ran dozens of schools, hospitals and charities, all fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.  A bomber’s education begins at puberty, when promising youths are inducted into clandestine groups whose life revolves around the mosque.  Recruits are drilled in a grim version of Islam.

Although the Koran forbids suicide and murder, such passages get little attention; instead, the boys learn that those who die for God go directly to heaven, a place of lush greenery where every martyr gets 70 virgin brides.  “These kids need someone to identify with, but they’ve seen their fathers humiliation.  Hamas replaces the father image with a group identity, one based on religion instead of a defeated Palestinian nationalism.  It provides a sense of mission and the promise of a better life in the next world.  Not everyone can be a suicide bomber, but those who make the grade are seen as stars, their faces captured on posters, key chains, and collections’ cars.  Pop groups praise the bombers’ exploits.

It is impossible to compare the suffering that drives a suicide bomber to the suffering of his victims, but in the training suicide camps, it’s easy to see why someone just starting life might long for the next world.  In this particular village there are 5,000 who jam this makeshift village,, where gray cinder-block hovels flank narrow alleys whose gutters run with sewage.  On the main road, a trucker from nearby is trying to sell tomatoes, but none of the kerchiefed women gathered around can afford to buy.

Like kids on drugs, kids high on dreams of martyrdom display telltale symptoms.  Parents become concerned when their boy(s) are spending too much time at the mosque or praying in a strange way or writing a will.  When this happens these young kids are looking for another heaven – it is not land and it sure is not reality.

And this my friends is what happens to these children who are trained from birth to take their life thinking they will live in a paradise that is not real.

kommonsentsjane