By Pedro Miguel

Translated By Carly Gatzert

April 18, 2006

Mexico - La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Diplaying a Failure
to Grasp the Depth of Palestinian Dispair? (above).

[NEWS PHOTOS: Bombing in Tel Aviv].
—BBC NEWS VIDEO: Israelis Restrain
Themselves, and Will Not 'Directly' Retaliate
for Suicide Bombing, Apr. 18, 00:01:41

Scene of Carnage After the Latest Suicide Attack
in Tel Aviv, April 17. Nine People Were Killed,
and Dozens Injured in the Attack. (below).







The 18-Year-Old that Blew Himself and Nine Other
People Up in Tel-Aviv on April 17. His Name Was
Sami Salim Mohammed Hammed, and He Was Put Up to
the Attack By the Militant Group Islamic Jihad. He
Was from the West Bank Town of Jenin. (above).

—BBC NEWS VIDEO: Mother Defends Her Son,
the Suicide Bomber, Apr. 18, 00:02:35

Relatives of Hamad, Hold Posters Proclaiming Him as a
Martyr Near the Family's Home Near Jenin. (below).





Am Elderly Palestinian Man in the West Bank Near
an Israeli Checkpoint Last Week. (above).

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The White House is correct: there is no excuse or justification for the carnage caused by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Tel Aviv, at the height of the Jewish Passover. However, the absence of a moral argument to justify the murder of civilians does not hinder one's ability to understand these actions. The Bush Government, much like that of [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, knows perfectly well the profound reasons behind the attacks. Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cast aside her impressive academic background and spoke as if she had never read anything other than Captain America or Superman comics. The terrorists, Rice said, lack any motive other than the desire to kill. As if it was only that simple.

It is doubtful that anyone will swallow such an "explanation," with the exception of the adolescent troops occupying Iraq and the ultra orthodox Jews, born and raised in Brooklyn, that allow their side-curls to grow and, AR-15 machine guns in hand, emigrate to Jericho to defend the hills that they claim Jehovah [Jewish name for God] granted to His people and form part of the Jewish heritage.

Even the most extreme instances of human violence, such as the cruelty brought about by Hitler's orders, or those of Stalin, Truman, Sharon, Saddam and the Bushes, still have recognizable causes and can be explained. When these leaders carried out massacres or destroyed defenseless towns and cities, they acted in the interest of irrational national plans, avaricious economic interests, and crazed geopolitical designs. The desire to kill doesn't come out of nowhere, and such is the case for presidential offices as well as the hovels where serial assassins hide from the authorities.

Just as in previous cases, there is a criminal attitude to be found in the Palestinian young men that arrive with dynamite and nails bound to their torsos to a place full of Israeli civilians, searching for the only kind of equality they can grasp with the inhabitants of the oppressing country: equality in death.

But the desire to kill comes later. First, you have a situation in which a community of people has been converted into livestock, or something worse, confined and in tatters on their own land, humiliated, plundered, and reduced to misery by a military power endowed with atomic fangs. The Israeli occupation has deprived the children, adults, and elderly of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as those that will be born in these lands, of the concept of a future. Their lives tick away as they live in intimidation and terror, suffering unjustifiable aggression, and enduring the dispossession of land and water, confiscation, banishment, and the threat of a missile falling on their homes, streets, cars and stores at any moment. In this land, one doesn't have to be a terrorist or even resemble one, to suffer the punishment and reprisal [meant for terrorists]. Countless children have crossed fields only to be shot and killed, and too many elderly women have been buried alive, pummeled by bulldozers.

After the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv of April 17, Ehud Olmert said that his government would take "all possible measures to prevent another attack." At this moment, there will be bombs falling on streets and houses in the Gaza and the West Bank region, occupying soldiers will be knocking down doors, kicking women and breaking furniture as they search for accomplices of the terrorists. Deep down, Olmert knows perfectly well that niether the infamous walls, the killings, the torture of prisoners, or even the selective assassinations, will hinder the violence. The armed helicopters, the supersonic aircraft, the walls and the nuclear bombs are all a waste of money in the face of the homicidal desperation of those that have been dispossessed to the point where life is intolerable and, consequently, have nothing to lose by pulling a cord activating the explosives bound to their bodies.

The leaders of Israel, supported by Washington and Brussels, can ban the Hamas militant group's government and put a nun at the head of the Palestinian National Authority. But this won't stop the suicide bombers either. The solution to Palestinian terrorism, as unjustifiable and savage as it is, is both much simpler and much more difficult than this. The Israeli government merely needs to draw back their troops to the borders that existed before the war of 1967, return the entirety of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem to the legitimate owners, and leave the Palestinians in peace.

VIDEO FROM DUBAI: PALESTINIAN FOREIGN MINISTER DEFENDS MARTYRDOM

Al-Arabiya TV, Dubai: Excerpts from an interview with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Apr. 6, 00:01:04, Via MEMRI

"These are not suicide operations. ... These are martyrdom-seeking operations, approved by all the authorities of the Islamic nation, who consider them to be the highest level of martyrdom. It is a form of resistance, and resistance against the occupation is legitimate."

Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar