Palestinian Suicide Bomber Hotties
It all started one quiet Friday afternoon in the peaceful neighborhood of Kiryat Hayovel in southern Jerusalem. At the local Supersol market, the mad Sabbath rush was underway; ruthless Jews rammed their carts down the isles and ripped all the bread, matzos, and Manischewitz off the shelves for the long awaited Passover holidays.
A long line had formed at the delicatessen counter in the back of the supermarket, where a distant relative, Sivan Peretz, worked wrapping kosher chicken breasts and salmon steaks as he made small talk with the customers. Discussing new ways to save money and arguing over whose nose was bigger, no doubt!
A middle-aged security guard, Haim Smadar, stood at the entrance of the supermarket, carefully searching bags. Looking for that one Jewposter from Palestine, who looks no different than the average Jew, but who is there on a mission for Allah to reck havoc and mayham on the Jewish people.
At around 1:50 p.m. (Jew Time), a beautiful young 17-year-old Israeli woman, Rachel Levy, petite with flowing hair stepped off the bus from her nearby apartment block and strolled toward the supermarket to buy some red pepper and herbs to have a fish dinner with her mother and two brothers.
At the exact same moment, another beautiful girl, strikingly attractive, with intense hazel eyes–walked toward the store’s glass double doors. The teenagers met at the entrance, brushing past each other as the guard reached out to grab the hazel-eyed girl, whose outfit may have aroused suspicion. “Wait!” the guard cried. A split second later, a powerful explosion tore through the supermarket, gutting shelves and sending bodies flying. When the smoke cleared and the screaming stopped, the two teenage girls and the guard lay dead, three more victims of the madness of martyrdom in the name of Islam!
EXECUTIONER AND VICTIM
Ayat al-Akhras and Rachel Levy never knew each other, but they grew up less than four miles apart.
One had spent her life locked within the grim confines of the Dehaishe refugee camp outside Bethlehem, a densely packed slum whose 12,000 residents lived in poverty and frustration. The other dwelled in the shadow of a sleek shopping mall filled with cinemas, cafes and boutiques.
In their different worlds, the girls were typical teenagers. Ayat was deeply politicized by the rage, gunfire, violent death and fervently anti-Israeli messages that surrounded her. Rachel did her best to shut out the violence and pretend that Israel was a normal country. In another time and another place, they could have been schoolmates, even friends. But the intifada cast them in the role of adversaries and, ultimately, executioner and victim.
In the past the world has been accustomed to one typical kind of suicide bomber - the angry middle-aged Islamic male driven by visions of paradise and rewards in heaven who martyrs himself to kill infidels. However, in this case it’s more shocking because not only is the suicide bomber female, she killed a girl who was extremely similar to herself. The almost twin-like faces of the bomber and her victim shocked many people across the world.
Martyrdom among Palestinians is becoming mainstream. The world hopes for a resolution, or at least an end to this terrible violence. But the forces that pushed Ayat to become a hot female bomb will take a very long time to defuse.
Ayat al-akhras grew up hearing stories of Israeli aggression and Palestinian flight. Akhras was raised in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem, the daughter of Palestinian refugees who themselves grew up in a tent camp in the Gaza Strip. The Deheishe Refugee Camp can be described as “a maze of cinder-block buildings, refuse-strewn alleyways and open sewers”.
In 1987, Ayat’s oldest brother, Samir, was jailed twice for throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers. A typical past-time for Palestinian youths. In 2000, members of her family were wounded and killed by an offesive done by the Israel Defences Forces. In 2002, a close friend and neighbor of Ayat that was playing with his toddler was hit and killed by a stray bullet fired by Israeli troops as they were on a counter-terrorism operation. This killing was the apparent trigger for Akhras’ to want to join one of the Palestinian terror groups.
Rachel Levy’s childhood was more fortunate. As an infant she moved with her parents from Israel to California’s Silicon Valley, where her mother, Avigail, joined the family electronics business and her father, Amos, worked in the furniture trade. One of those annoying Jewbag furniture salesman who tries to upsale and haggle your way into paying too much for sub-standard furniture. A family illness took them back to Israel eight years later. Rachel had a tough time making the transition from the United States to Israel. She considered Israelis brash; she preferred speaking English. But after a trip back to the United States last summer, she returned convinced that Israel was where she belonged, telling her mother, “I feel at home here.”
She finally adapted to the rhythms of teenage life. She fretted about the gap between her teeth and agonized about her weight. Like many teenage girls, she worked out every day and usually ate the same meal when she went out: a salad, a Diet Pepsi, a lollipop and a pickle. She listened to the music of Pink Floyd and Christina Aguilera, liked “Pretty Woman” and “Titanic,” and socialized at the Jerusalem mall.
Though the Palestinian uprising had cast a pall over that life–a suicide bomber killed three people in a downtown cafe where Rachel and her friends hung out–she remained apolitical and unconcerned, caught up in teenage passions. “She wasn’t afraid of bombs,” says a friend. ” ‘Aren’t you afraid to go [out]?’ I would ask her. And she said, ‘No, why would I be?’”
Just across the Green Line in the Palestinian slum al-Akhras lived a totally different life. Masked militants often marched through her neighborhood after the funerals of suicide bombers and guerrillas killed by Israeli troops, firing their automatic rifles in the air.
On the evening of March 8, neighbor Gsa Zakari Faraj and his daughter were playing with Legos when he was shot through the window by Israeli troops. Faraj’s death had a powerful impact on Ayat. Shortly afterward, her friends believe, she either sought out or was approached by the Al Aqsa brigades’ suicide unit. “You send out signals at school or mosque, and those in charge of suicide attacks gather information about the candidates,” says a teacher in the camp, explaining that stating admiration for martyrs or a willingness to die for the cause is often enough to alert the operatives. ”
Days before her operation, she met in a secret location with at least one accomplice from Al Aqsa, who videotaped her final message and dropped it off with a local TV station in Bethlehem after her attack. Backlit, with her head wrapped in the black-and-white checked kaffiyeh of the Fatah movement, she reads from a prepared statement in a strong monotone: “I say to the Arab leaders, ‘Stop sleeping. Stop failing to fulfill your duty. Shame on the Arab armies who are sitting and watching the girls of Palestine fighting while they are asleep.’”
Rachel Levy spent the morning of Passover preparing for the meal that night. After sleeping in, she and her mother drank coffee in the kitchen and discussed the family’s Friday-evening meal. “Racheli said she would like a change, fish instead of chicken, but we didn’t have all the ingredients,” her mother says. “We were missing parsley, kousbara [coriander] and red pepper. I told Racheli to go down to the local store to pick up those items, but she insisted on going to the supermarket in Kiryat Hayovel. I said, ‘OK, go, but be quick. It’s late.’”
Ayat followed a route along footpaths and through fields, skirting Israeli military checkpoints and crossing unnoticed into Jerusalem. A recently recruited Tanzim member, Ibrahim Sarahne, who had once worked in the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket was waiting for her in a car on the other side of the Green Line. There she received her belt of explosives and was driven to a dropoff point near the Supersol market in Kiryat Hayovel.
She was so composed before her act that she shooed away two Palestinian women selling herbs and scallions in front of the supermarket. This caused the supermarket security guard, Haim Smadar, who spoke Arabic to become suspicious of Ayat. Smadar blocked Ayat’s path and wanted to search her for weapons. At that moment Rachel Levy brushed by Ayat. Ayat pressed the detonator, blowing herself in one direction and Rachel in the other. Their bodies were found on opposite ends of the entrance to the Supersol market. Smadar’s actions saved the lives of many, as Akhras would otherwise have exploded the device inside the supermarket.
Rachel’s mother, Avigail Levy, identified her daughter’s remains at the morgue. “Her body was mangled, but her face was perfect, untouched,” she said. She strongly supports Ariel Sharon’s massive military occupation of the West Bank. “I don’t want revenge,” she insists. “But I want the government to make it clear that if another family sends their child to be killed, they will suffer. This is the only way for them to understand–when they feel what we feel.”
Ayat’s father, Muhammad al-Akhras, received confirmation that his daughter was the suicide bomber when about a dozen militiamen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades stood outside his house and fired their guns in the air in salute. Either the Palestinian Authority or the Iraqi government pays as much as $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. On the windshield of the al-Akhras family car was a black-and-white poster of Ayat draped in a flowing kaffiyeh and brandishing a pistol–the same picture that had begun to appear in the alleys of Dehaishe, inspiring new martyrs to the cause.
And they have a whole army of Ayats!
“When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying; the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people.” - George W. Bush
She’s really hot for a Palestinian Chick, one could
even say that she’s the bomb!
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