The Making of a Martyr

Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com

Goldstein: "The Making of a Martyr" is about the ongoing, state-sponsored incitement and recruitment of innocent Palestinian children to become suicide bombers.
Frontpage Interview's guest today is Brooke Goldstein, a practicing attorney based in New York. She serves as Director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, Director of the Children's Rights Institute, is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute, an award-winning documentary film producer, and the recipient of the 2007 E Nathaniel Gates Award for outstanding public advocacy. Brooke is the director of the new documentary, The Making of a Martyr, which will be screened at the upcoming Liberty Film Festival.

FP: Brooke Goldstein, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Goldstein: Thank you for having me.

FP: Tell us a bit about your new documentary and what inspired you to make it.

Goldstein: "The Making of a Martyr" is about the ongoing, state-sponsored incitement and recruitment of innocent Palestinian children to become suicide bombers. The film centers around a fifteen year old, physically dwarfed, Palestinian boy named Hussam Abdu who was arrested at an Israeli border checkpoint with live explosives strapped around his waist. Hussam had been recruited for a suicide-homicide mission by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades just 48 hours before. Fortunately, out of love for his family and hope for his future, Hussam chose not to go through with the act and voluntarily turned himself in to the IDF. Tried and convicted of attempted murder, Hussam is now serving out the third year of an eight-year sentence in the HaSharon prison.

I was finishing up my second year at law school when I heard about Hussam's case. His story was compelling and it occurred to me that there was a legal argument here that was not being made. Which is that Hussam, an innocent party who doesn't deserve to spend his formative years in jail, is as much a victim of a human rights violation as would have been the civilians killed in his explosive wake.
Hussam, like thousands of other Palestinian children, is the product of a shrewd brainwashing and recruitment strategy, targeting children from infancy and teaching them to revere martyrdom and seek their own death as suicide bombers.

This horrific strategy is being propagated by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and is being copied outside the area by other terrorist entities such as the Taliban. Television shows, music videos, sticker albums, summer camps, school textbooks, you name it, are being used in the most sinister fashion, to indoctrinate Palestinian children towards martyrdom for the sake of Jihad. This practice is horrific child abuse, it is a form of state-sponsored mass infanticide and frankly, it is tantamount to societal suicide.
I made this documentary because I wanted to expose this crime against children, in the hopes that it will soon be stopped.
FP: What do you think are the roots of the illegal, state-sponsored incitement and recruitment of children to become suicide bombers?

Goldstein: I don't know why the Palestinian society is actively encouraging and enabling the death of their own children. Regardless of what the motive is, there is no logical, political, moral, religious or other justification for this practice. It is abhorrent, it is illegal and it is contrary to survival instincts as well as basic principles of humanity. The scale at which this type of premeditated murder of a society's own children is happening is also unprecedented in recorded human history. Nothing good can come of this practice and no peace will ever be attained if children continue to be taught on such a mass scale to blow themselves up.

FP: Well, Palestinian culture is based on a suicidal death cult. Honor killings, infanticide, gender apartheid and the prioritization to destroy the Jewish state rather than to have one's own, are just a few extensions of this blood lust – a blood lust that your powerful documentary crystallizes.

So where is the international outrage regarding this phenomenon? And if this practice is non-Islamic, which many apologists argue it is, where is the outrage in the Islamic world and the Islamic calls to stop this crime?

Goldstein: On the same line, why aren't Muslim parents speaking out against the use of their own children as suicide bombers? Where is Louise Arbour and the United Nations on this issue? Where is Amnesty International and the special prosecutor at the Hague, why aren't they screaming bloody murder? Why is this growing phenomenon being ignored by the international media? Could you imagine what would happen if any western state strapped bombs on horses or dogs, and then sent them out into civilian populations to detonate? There would be deafening outcry from animal rights groups and rightly so! But when it comes to Palestinian children being used in the same manner no one is speaking out on a consistent basis.

The UN has issued over a hundred resolutions against Israel alleging human rights violations, but it has issued not one condemning the premeditated murder of Palestinian children as human bombs. Are the lives of these children worth less when they are taken by their own community?

I think one reason for this silence may the strong bias in the media and in international organizations against reporting negatively on the Palestinian community, which they view as the underdog. However, the silence thus far exhibited is hypocritical and sending the message that these parties either condone the activity or simply don't care. In the meantime states and other parties that sponsor this practice continue acting with immunity.

FP: One of the reasons Muslim parents aren't speaking out against the use of their children as suicide bombers is because many of them, like Umma Nidal, rejoice when their children die as martyrs in jihad. This is connected to the yearnings for suicide in Palestinian and radical Islamic culture overall – an issue that your film brings much needed attention to.
Can you talk a bit about the phenomenon of "Lawfare"?

Goldstein: Lawfare is defined as the pursuit of strategic goals through aggressive legal maneuvers. Lately analysts, researchers, media outlets, charitable groups and authors dedicated to publishing and exposing issues of concern regarding counter-terrorism, have found themselves on the receiving end of a series of targeted lawsuits.

These suits, whose claims range from defamation to workplace harassment, are designed to bankrupt, punish and intimidate Defendants into silence and have an overall chilling effect on the exercise of free speech within this country.

For example, Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of the book "Funding Evil," was sued for defamation in a Plaintiff-friendly U.K libel court by Saudi billionaire Khalid Bin Mahfouz, whom Rachel cites as providing financial support to terrorists. Rachel lost on default and was ordered to pay a significant amount to Bin Mahfouz while her important book is banned from being sold in England.

Bruce Tefft, a former anti-terrorism consultant for the NYPD, was sued by an Egyptian John Doe Muslim police officer for workplace harassment after he sent out emails to a voluntary recipient list of NYPD officers about the threat of Islamic radicalization within our country. Ironically, a few weeks later the NYPD released its own report confirming Tefft's fears. Nonetheless, Bruce continues to rack up legal costs defending himself in what looks like a frivolous suit designed to discourage the free flow of information within our justice system.

Sometimes just the threat of suit is enough to intimidate parties into silence. When Bin Mahfouz wrote a letter to Cambridge University Press threatening to sue over Robert Collins and J. Millard Burr's "Alms for Jihad," the publisher ceased print, destroyed books, requested that libraries do the same and released an apology letter claiming facts they had once proliferated as true, to be false. Even though both authors sent supporting documents to back up their claims against Mahfouz, and despite the fact that Burr is a former State Department employee and well respected intelligence analyst, Cambridge Press capitulated and refused to disseminate information of grave public concern. The Legal Project, at the MEF, of which I am director, was launched to counter such attacks on by arranging for pro-bono representation of citizens who are unfairly targeted with malicious and frivolous suits.

FP: What can readers of ours who would like to make a change in terms of the themes your film raises do to make a difference?

Goldstein: Anyone who is appalled by this practice should speak out against it, should lobby their government to push for a resolution at the UN condemning this practice and should pressure their local media to do a better job reporting on the age of suicide bombers.
Rarely does the media report on the age of the bomber and this is leading to some serious misconceptions about why we are seeing suicide bombers in the first place. Children are not doing this for political reasons, nor are they doing it out of desperation. They are doing it out of aspiration, aspiration to be famous, to have sex with virgins, to have their likeness on martyr posters hung high on classroom walls, etc. Moreover, attorneys should be encouraged to take on these cases pro-bono and litigate in international and national courts on behalf of children who have been abused in this fashion. Satellite companies that broadcast children's television programs that incite death and hate should be charged with aiding and abetting the premeditated murder of children. UNRWA schools in the Palestinian territories must cease using text books that espouse violence and killing.
Finally, we must empower moderate Muslim voices who are willing to speak out against the indoctrination of their children, because change will ultimately only come from within.
FP: Brooke Goldstein, thank you for joining us today. And thank you for your courage in fighting for the truth.
Goldstein: My pleasure.
FP: Just as a final note to interested readers: the Liberty Film Festival and the David Horowitz Freedom Center will present Brooke Goldstein's film with guest host Dennis Prager on Thursday, October 18 th at Harmony Gold Preview House, 7655 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90046 . The reception begins at 6:30 p.m. and film screening at 7:30 p.m. To purchase tickets online, click here. For more information, call 323-556-2550 ext 209.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.