Author:
Publication: WorldNetDaily.com
Date: February 5, 2003
URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30866
Arab psychologist says more than
half want to strap on bombs
A Palestinian psychologist claims
that more than half of Palestinian children aged 6 to 11 dream of becoming
suicide bombers, according to a video presentation produced by Israel's
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The documentary says Dr. Shafiq
Massalha conducted a study that has led him to conclude that "in about
10 years, a very murderous generation will come of age, full of hatred
and ready to die in suicide missions," the Israeli National News Service
reported.
Massalha, a clinical psychologist
in East Jerusalem, was a featured presenter at the United Nations North
American NGO [Non- governmental organization] Symposium on the Question
of Palestine at U.N. headquarters in New York in 1995.
In the film titled "Seeds of Hate,"
the narrator says: "In a society in which the legitimization of child murderers
becomes a part of its ideology, then normative human morality no longer
exists. Which moral rules shall these children pass onto their children
when they in turn become parents?"
The scene moves to Arab men yelling
and holding up pieces of human organs with a child's loud voice in the
background saying, "I will eat the flesh of my conqueror."
"All of this has been orchestrated
quite methodically by the Palestinian Authority," the narrator says. "What
kind of government calls upon its citizens to become uncompromising killers,
while presenting itself to the world as a victim striving only for its
peace? This untenable hypocrisy should not be tolerated by enlightened
civilization - yet this is the reality happening here and now."
'Bombs all over her body'
A July 11, 2001, story in the London
Independent newspaper featured Massalha's research on the night dreams
of children during the first intifada in 1989 and the current uprising.
Massalha gave an example of an 11-year-old
Palestinian girl who dreamed that she went to a market in Israel with bombs
all over her body. She stopped in the middle of a crowd of shoppers, counted
to 10, then blew herself up.
The Independent said Massalha, with
the assistance of teachers and social workers, distributed notebooks in
the spring of 2001 to a random sample of 150 boys and girls aged 10 and
11. The psychologist asked the children to record their dreams every morning
for 10 days and to illustrate them.
He found 78 percent of the dreams
were political and tended to be physically violent.
Fifteen percent of the sample wanted
to be "martyrs," said Massalha, who added that almost every child knew
and cited the names of "martyrs" from their own area, along with Mohammed
al Dura, the 12-year-old boy whose death amid crossfire was captured on
film.
The psychologist said the "martyrs"
were idols to the children.
"I would like to go to Heaven,"
one child wrote.
Another was more specific: "On May
4, I want to become a martyr."
Massalha's conclusions are bleak,
the Independent commented.
"Any experience, especially the
very strong and unusual, is never completely erased," Massalha said. "If
the situation continues as it is, the trauma will grow. If it stops and
a new reality takes over, it will still take a lot of time and effort to
overcome the mistrust and hatred."
'Psychological disease'
Last month, the London-based Arabic
paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an article by psychologist Dr. Ahmed
Najam A-Din, who asserts that suicide terrorists have a "psychological
disease."
He called on Arab society to fight
it just as they would fight any other illness.
"Suicide is a sickness, and [the
terrorist leaders] are using it for perverse political ends," he said.
"The increasing suicide actions, which receive support and admiration amongst
Muslim youth in general and Palestinian youth in particular, have become
one of our most dangerous social and psychological phenomena. ."
A-Din said that "as a psychologist,
I can say clearly that the psychological profile of the suicide killers
is that of a mentally ill person in every sense."
Instead of being treated, he said,
"there are groups within the Palestinian and Arab societies that encourage
them not only to continue along this path, but even to broaden the ranks
and get others to join in their 'sickness.'"
