Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans-To a Jew!

by Aaron Klein

  Palestinians on October 10 began construction of a mosque on the rubble of the Tomb and yeshiva compound. Workers painted the dome of the compound green, the color of Islam and thus became of Judaism's third holiest site.

  Through the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, I was put in touch with Abu Mujaheed, leader of the October 2000 attacks against Joseph's Tomb, and with Jamal Tarawi, who was the chief of a major cell of the Brigades in Nablus during the period of the riots. Tarawi, a nephew of Palestinian intelligence director Tafiq Tarawi, is a Palestinian parliament member who was arrested by Israel in May 2007.

  The night before I was to meet in Abu Mujaheed near Nablus to discuss the tomb desecrations, I was overcome with some sort of forty-eight-hour stomach bug. The next day, October 11, 2006, I could barely get out of bed and had a high-grade fever. I had to postpone the terror meeting by a week. That same day, incredibly, an American student was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists just outside Nablus in the very area and at about the same time I was to meet Abu Mujaheed. The student was held a few hours and was released unharmed. I couldn't help but think what could have happened had I showed up in Nablus that day. It was one of several close calls I would have while writing this book.

  The next week I mustered the necessary courage-or stupidity-to meet with Abu Mujaheed, tomb desecrator. Mujaheed was charged by Arafat's Fatah militias with directing shooting attacks against the tomb starting in 1998 through the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. He described to me how the cells of his Brigades ambushed and attacked the tomb until the Israeli army ran away:

  We used to attack the tomb on an almost daily basis. Our fighters were divided into five to six cells. Each cell was composed of ten members and we used to crawl to the tomb and exchange fire with the soldiers. We led attacks in order to take away the Israeli flag. It was part of our resistance against the occupation. The goal was to chase the army of occupation from our land and the result [an Israeli retreat] proves that when we are determined we can defeat the Israeli enemy.

  I agreed with Abu Mujaheed's analysis that the Israeli retreat from Joseph's Tomb absolutely proves Israel can be defeated. What other message can possibly be sent by Israel evacuating one of the holiest sites in Judaism in direct response to repeated Palestinian attacks?

  I asked the terror leader, who is still active in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, how he can justify attacking Judaism's third holiest site.

  With a straight face, he denied all reports, including from major media outlets and actual Israeli Defense Forces video footage, that his group shot at the Tomb site, claiming instead his attacks were directed only at the adjacent Israeli military outpost.

  "The Israelis were the first in the world to turn a holy site into a military base, a very fortified military base. We never attack any holy place. Our religion forbids us to do so. We attacked the military post that the Israelis placed there. It is now a holy site. When the Israelis were here it was a military base," Abu Mujaheed said.

  I explained to Abu Mujaheed that Israel stationed troops at the tomb specifically to protect worshipers from his terror group.

  An official IDF statement put it best:

  The military compound set up next to the shrine was to safeguard and protect the site and the safety of worshippers, in accordance with the agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Claims by the Palestinians that the site was a military compound are blatant lies and possibly an attempt to legitimize the criminal and vulgar desecration of a Jewish holy site.

  I also scoffed at Abu Mujaheed's absurd claim Palestinians never attack holy places.

  "You don't attack holy sites? Explain to me the video footage of Palestinian rioters and gunmen burning down the Tomb's yeshiva, bulldozing parts of the holy tomb, and then painting its dome green," I said. "To me this it the most barbaric behavior imaginable," I continued. "Even animals don't behave like this."

  That statement got the terrorist tomb desecrator upset and sent him on a verbal rampage in which he accused me of being the animal.

  "You Jews are the animals who do not respect holy sites. We see how you don't allow people to pray in the [Temple Mount's] Al Aqsa mosque."

  (I must stop him here and point out his deception. The only people who are restricted from praying on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, are Jews and Christians. We'll get into that in a later chapter.)

  Continued the venting, anti-Jewish desecrater: "You are the animals who not only desecrated holy books and the holy Quran in prisons like many of our heroic prisoners witnessed.. .1 even think that some Jewish settlers and Israeli Army officers are below the evolution of animals, they are insects or even less."

  He went on to accuse Jews of falsifying the Torah and Jewish history to claim Biblical Joseph was a Jew when indeed he was a Muslim and that Joseph's Tomb houses a Jewish patriarch, when, he explained, the site actually entombs a Muslim sheikh.

  I accused Abu Mujaheed's group of shooting at unarmed worshipers at the tomb, another well-documented charge, but he denied that, as well.

  "We never shot prayers. We never shot innocents. It is possible that if a prayer was armed he was shot by us, but we never shot an unarmed prayer."

  Mujaheed claimed he didn't know how yeshiva student Hillel Leiberman, whose shot-up dead body was found in a cave near the tomb, was killed. He absurdly suggested Leiberman was shot by Israel while trying to protect the tomb.

  Tafiq Tarawi, who led a major cell of the Brigades responsible for many of the tomb attacks, also claimed to me the Palestinians didn't kill Leiberman.

  "This is one more Israeli lie that the Palestinians had shot this guy. We respect all religions and we respect all prayers," said Tarawi. Since he is now a Palestinian lawmaker, Tarawi would not confirm to me whether he was directly involved in the tomb attacks during his tenure with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, during which he led a Brigades cell in the vicinity of the tomb.

  I asked Tarawi what Joseph's Tomb means to him. He called it a "holy site where our fathers and grandfathers and all Muslims used to pray at the place of an old Muslim personality. This is part of our holy sites and part of our cult and faith and not the Jews."

  Denying history tying Jews to the tomb for thousands of years, Tarawi said, "Only after the Israeli occupation (in 1967) we started to hear this version of the tomb being the tomb of Joseph from the Torah. This is one more Israeli lie."

  Tarawi and Abu Mujaheed said they would never allow the Jews to again establish a yeshiva at Joseph's Tomb as long as it is under Palestinian control.

  "A yeshiva is an institution," said Abu Mujaheed. "An institution can be the beginning of claiming rights and these claims can bring once again the Israeli army to establish a base in the place and we cannot accept this. If the Jews try to build a yeshiva, we will shoot at them."

  As I stood there and stared in the eyes of these terrorist desecraters, these gunmen who led a campaign of violence against one of the most sacred sites in my religion, I found I was actually not angry with them. How can I blame terrorists who do not have an ounce of humanity or decency to them and who so wantonly disregard history and reality? I cannot fault evil for being evil. And I cannot be upset when their society, which preaches suicide terror and extreme anti-Semitic propaganda, desecrates holy Jewish sites the minute Israel evacuates.

  No, instead I was furious at the Israeli government. How can Barak possibly charge Palestinian society with protecting Joseph's Tomb as a Jewish site when most Palestinians deny there is any Jewish connection to the structure? Did Israeli officials actually believe Arafat's Brigades gunmen, who led daily shooting campaigns against the sacred monument, would allow freedom of worship once the Israelis retreated?

  And I was angered at the hypocrisy of the international community for its failure to hold the Palestinians to any standard of civilized society. Yes, there were some condemnations of the Tomb attacks from Washington and European capitals. But those condemnations were followed by world pressure applied against Israel to re
treat from still more territory and more holy sites.

  And I was fuming at my fellow Jews. Where were they when Joseph's Tomb was desecrated? Can you imagine the Muslim response if Israel bulldozed the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's so-called third holiest site, and converted it into a synagogue? The Muslims would unleash holy hell. They'd launch World War III. And yet when Judaism's third holiest site was so violently molested you didn t hear much from world Jewry. Sure, American Jewish organizations issued the traditional press releases expressing "shock" and "outrage" at the Joseph's tomb desecrations, but where were the mass protests? There was a tiny handful of Jews who acted, including the valiant Susan Roth, chairperson of the Eshet Chayil Foundation, which paid to have the few remaining holy objects from Joseph's Tomb transferred to Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, which is still safe.. .for now. But where were the calls from world Jewry for Israel to retake the site or at least for the Palestinians to respect it? Why are Jews still ignoring the issue while Joseph's Tomb is being held hostage?

  I cannot speak for world Jewry but as a bona fide member of the tribe I can say American Jews are too consumed with maintaining their stock portfolios and vacation homes in Boca Raton to concern themselves with such trivial matters as the desecration and now utter neglect of Judaism's third holiest site.

  Joseph, my heart weeps for thee.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HI, MY NAME IS AHMED,

  AND I WANT TO BE A

  SUICIDE BOMBER

  I EFORE I DRIVE YOU TO HELL, enjoy your tea and our hos- Opitality," said Ahmed, gazing dead straight into my eyes.

  Ahmed is a twenty-two-year-old Palestinian student from the northern West Bank city of Jenin. He's about six feet tall, with an athletic build, short-cropped hair, and dark brown eyes. He says he is part of a "normal Palestinian family; we're not poor but far from being wealthy."

  Ahmed hopes to complete his college studies in 2008 and says he has a good prospect to get married. He occasionally lifts weights, plays soccer with friends, and watches television, particularly news and historical programs. He spends some of his free time browsing the Internet.

  From what I could garner, Ahmed and I have a few things in common. Both of us are religiously oriented. Like me he comes from a large family-Ahmed falls second in the line of four boys and three girls; I'm the oldest of ten children, four boys and six girls. He shares a room with two of his brothers and doesn't get much privacy. Before I went off to Yeshiva University in New York, I shared a room with two of my brothers. The only privacy I ever took in was when I went to the bathroom.

  Ordinarily I could see myself hanging out with Ahmed. Maybe play some sports together. Go to a cafe. Listen to music. But Ahmed and I weren't engaging in friendly banter. In fact, I don't even know his real name; I was asked to just call him Ahmed, and halfway into our conversation, Ahmed said he wanted to kill me.

  Our talk, conducted through the good graces of my translator, Ali, was being monitored and filtered by Abu Ayman, a scary-looking, dark-featured man in his late twenties, whose stern gaze stopped Ahmed several times from divulging too many personal details for fear I would expose him to the Israeli authorities.

  Ahmed has been recruited by Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Palestinian terror group, to become a suicide bomber. Abu Ayman was the commander of Islamic Jihad in Jenin.

  Together with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is the declared military wing of the Palestinian Authority's Fatah party, Islamic jihad is responsible for all of the suicide bombings in Israel in 2005, 2006, and 2007, including a bombing at a shwarma eatery in Tel Aviv in April 2006, which killed American teenager Daniel Wultz and eight Israelis.

  Islamic Jihad is one of the most active terror organizations in the world when it comes to suicide attacks. The town of Jenin, the terror group's main stronghold, is sometimes called "City of Suicide Bombers" since the vast majority of Palestinian bombers originated in its narrow, densely populated enclaves. The place is a suicide bomber breeding zone.

  According to Abu Ayman, Ahmed is a top recruit and has "great potential" to become one of the next suicide bombers to infiltrate into an Israeli city and blow himself up among civilians, perhaps in a restaurant or at a nightclub. Ayman personally recruited Ahmed after the twenty-two-year-old made it known to local terror leaders he wanted to become a suicide bomber.

  "I pray that Allah gives me the honor to be dead in an operation. This is the supreme and the noblest way to ascend to Allah," Ahmed tells me.

  Ayman sat with Ahmed, myself, and Ali in the dining room of a small, sparsely furnished apartment in the center of Jenin. A woman and four children were in a second room of the apart ment. The children were playing loudly and occasionally peered into the dining room, looked at us, and started laughing.

  The walls of the dining room were plastered with propaganda posters of Islamic Jihad leaders, including Ramadan Shallah, the terror group's supreme commander who lives in Damascus under Syrian protection. One particularly flashy poster featured the face of Mahmoud Tawalbeh, a local Islamic Jihad leader killed during an Israeli anti-terror raid in 2002. Tawalbeh was somewhat infamous in Palestinian terror circles because he sent his brother on a suicide bombing mission.

  "The martyr Tawalbeh is an inspiration for what it means to sacrifice for Allah," said Ayman.

  "Do you want some sugar?" Ayman asked, as he poured Arabic samovar tea into a small glass for me.

  I don't know what it is, but terrorists always serve the best tea. I remember every terror interview I conduct by the taste of each cup of aromatic Arabic tea that was served. The tea helps calm my frazzled nerves during these unpredictable journeys. And arriving at this Jenin apartment was quite a nerve-wracking feat.

  Driving from Tel Aviv, about twenty miles away, I was instructed by Ayman to park my car at the main Israeli checkpoint just outside the entrance to Jenin, a city entirely controlled by the multiple gangs and thugs that comprise the Palestinian Authority security forces. From the checkpoint, Ali and I were instructed to take a local Palestinian taxi into the center of Jenin, where we waited about ten minutes, likely to ensure we weren't being followed.

  A white Ford Escort with no license plates raced up to us. We were told by two men armed with black American assault rifles to get in the back seat. We were driven through a narrow alley until we arrived at an apartment complex.

  Ali and I exited the car. The armed men scanned the area and asked us to remove the batteries from our cell phones, a routine I was used to by now. The Israeli Defense Forces is known to use cell phone signals to track exact locations of wanted terrorists. Apparently, the IDF can even track a cell phone when the device is turned off, as long as the battery is still inside.

  Ayman, who was high on Israel's most wanted list of terrorists, greeted us at the door of the apartment, which he said did not belong to him. I am told Ayman left his shelter in another section of Jenin to meet us. The two armed men waited outside the apartment and stood guard. Sitting quietly inside the living room, his hands folded, was Ahmed.

  Ahmed didn't seem to fit the profile of what many believe is the make-up of the average Palestinian suicide bomber. He's not poor. His situation is not desperate. He told me his life is not allconsumed by a hate for Israel. He seemed quite intelligent. I'd venture to guess he is actually content with his place in life. So why in the world would this guy sitting across from me want to blow himself into little bloody pieces while trying to murder and maim as many Jews as possible?

  "I originally decided to become a martyr after I saw what the Israeli army did in the refugee camp of Jenin in the big military campaign of April 2002," begins Ahmed.

  Ahmed was referring to an Israeli anti-terror raid in his hometown, in which Palestinian leaders accused the Jewish state of a "massacre," claiming the Israeli army had wantonly killed over five hundred Palestinian civilians, including many women and children.

  Most international news media at first simply reported the Palestinian fabrications. But it was qui
ckly determined that fiftysix Palestinians, mostly gunmen, were killed in the raid, which had been provoked by a series of deadly suicide attacks inside Israel reportedly planned and directed from the terror infrastructure in Jenin. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers had also died in the Jenin battle, because IDF troops had conducted house-to-house searches expressly in order to minimize civilian casualties by avoiding air attacks.

  Continued Ahmed, "My desire to be a [bomber] became stronger when I understood what status I will have in heaven if I sacrifice myself for Allah. Every time somebody else dies as a martyr in a bomb attack, I pray for him but I feel jealous. I want to be where he is now and I pray that Allah will one day offer me this occasion and this honor."

  "Is your main motivation for becoming a bomber is to serve Allah?" I asked.

  "Yes, of course. Allah gave Muslims the possibility to gain their prize and payment in different ways. There are those [Muslims] who pray and fast only and respect Allah's commandments, and there are those who wish a higher prize. And the highest prize is given to those who sacrifice themselves, their lives, their bodies and everything in this world."

  What Ahmed said immediately struck me because it contradicted claims by some Western academics and many of my colleagues in the news media that Palestinians become suicide bombers because they are poor and angry at Israeli occupation.

  Whenever there is a suicide bombing in Israel, much of the international news media race to find the bomber's family and produce so-called human interest stories painting the murdering terrorist as a victim of Israeli aggression driven to revenge. The stories are all pretty much the same for every suicide bomber.

  Once, in February 2002, I was actually caught in a terror attack when I was visiting Israel as a student. A Palestinian terrorist opened fire on Jaffa Street, a busy shopping mecca in Jerusalem, killing two women and injuring thirty others, before police officers chased down the terrorist and shot him to death. Such shootings are considered suicide missions because, in Israel's extremely armed society, the terrorist has no chance of escaping alive.