The Honeymooners

"For War Widows, Hamas Recruits an Army of Husbands"

A8, Friday 10/31/08
By Taghreed El-Khodary

One of the first rules of totalitarian movements and fascist governments is that they provide for the people. This may seem contradictory. After all, totalitarian governments are widely perceived as anti-human so how could they be responsible for anything good?

In truth, though fear and terror may be the main tools of control, they are often not enough. The people must be won over by soft means, actions which help them, such as building roads, hospitals. In the case of Hamas, they provide their people with weddings. Of course, the brides aren't any old brides. They are the widows of Hamas terrorists. Indeed, the widows are the ones who might have the strongest grievance against Hamas, so providing for them is especially important.

An article like this is part of the crucial lesson that anti-Semites are people, too. Just because they hate us Jews doesn't mean they – like us – don't want to be married and have families. No doubt the babies in these families will be resistance babies, children who will have little choice but to join the movement for Israel's destruction.

When I read the last line of the article, I nearly hurled: “The night before the mass wedding party, he said, his wife shared with him her ultimate wish: to carry out a joint suicide attack against Israel.”

Some people honeymoon in Hawaii, some in Aruba, but married couples from Gaza kill themselves to murder others and honeymoon in Paradise. The death cult, as Paul Berman refers to it, is so strong among Palestinians that even the most life-affirming human ritual – marriage – has been subsumed by it. My sadness is great.

In the piece, Muhammad Yousef, a member of Hamas' Qassam Brigades says, "Marriage is the same as jihad." What a romantic!

I am amazed that in reporting this story, Taghreed El-Khodary barely blinks a critical eye in disapproval or shock at what she observes.