Here’s one for all those who think that the jihad is advancing today only by terrorist violence. In fact, it is advancing across a broad spectrum of political and cultural fronts. But few, very very few, recognize that. Umm Farhat update: “Hamas rallies to ‘martyr’ mother,” from the TimesOnline, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
ONE objective burnt deep in the heart and mind of Mohammed Farhat when, rifle in hand, he attacked a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip: to kill as many Israelis as possible.
The 17-year-old Palestinian dispatched five settlers before being shot dead. In later military operations his two brothers were killed by the Israelis, who also tried to blow up the Farhats” home.Today, with the intifada in Gaza and the West Bank over and Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip completed, Mariam Farhat, the mother of the three dead youths, insists that the struggle must go on. But this time she has chosen the ballot box over the bullet.
Across the Arab world the 56-year-old mother is an icon of the resistance as she campaigns in Gaza as a candidate for the Islamic militant group Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections on January 25.
Hamas has been the deadliest of the Palestinian militant groups. It has always stood for the obliteration of the Jewish state and was responsible for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis over the past five years.
Farhat still mourns her sons. Nidal, her eldest, was killed in 2003 while preparing an attack and Rawad was blown up last year in an Israeli airstrike on his car, which was laden with rockets.
The mother regards her candidacy for the Palestinian Legislative Council as a logical extension of the armed struggle she encouraged her sons to die for. She denies that Hamas”s decision to join mainstream Palestinian political life contradicts its military goals.
“The jihadist project completes the political one and the political project cannot be completed without jihad,” she says. “The resistance needs the political project to support it through the legislative council.”