Suicide Bomber's Family Attacks Islamic Jihad
Wednesday January 21, 2004
Suicide bombers and the organizations the train them aren't universally popular among Palestinians. Recently 17-year-old Iyad al-Masri tried to kill Israelis in retaliation for the killing of his brother and cousin by the Israeli army earlier that week. His parents, though, are outraged that Islamic Jihad would have helped al-Masri try to become a suicide bomber and are leveling harsh criticisms against the organization.
The Guardian reports:
Iyad's father, Bilal, blamed the Israeli army and Iyad's Palestinian recruiters for his death. "This family is very angry. The Israelis recruited my son as a martyr because they killed his brother in front of him. Then they killed his cousin in front of him too. Mohammed's brains were thrown all over Iyad. If he hadn't seen his brother and cousin die he would never have become a martyr," said Mr Masri in a telephone interview from Nablus yesterday.
"But those who sent him [as a suicide bomber] exploited his grief. I have told Islamic Jihad, the ones who sent him, that they did not study the matter carefully. They sent him to his death for nothing. He had never left Nablus before and did not know how to get about on his own. He would never have reached the place he was going." ... Moawiah al-Masri, a distant relative of the dead youths and a member of the Palestinian parliament, said the unusual public criticism of Islamic Jihad was backed by many ordinary people in Nablus.
Where can ordinary Palestinians turn for leadership? The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat is often perceived as being too weak to accomplish anything - either they don't do anything to challenge the Israelis or they exploit regular Palestinians in order to score political points against the Israelis. Other groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also exploit the Palestinian people in order to achieve their political and religious goals.
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