Another Palestinian Teen Suicide Recruit Promised Heaven, Arrested

Tamer Khawireh, 15, ran home on Sunday and buried his head in his mother's arms.

"They tricked me, they tricked me," he sobbed repeatedly.

Promising him heaven and limitless virgins, Islamic Jihad recruited Tamer to be a suicide bomber - the fourth Nablus boy recruited by terrorist groups and arrested for attempted suicide attacks against Israel in just the past month.

Like the other boys recently recruited, Khawireh was easily bought - 100 shekels, new clothes, a cell phone and cigarettes. His older brother Raed caught his brother smoking and using the phone.

"He told us that the armed wing of Islamic Jihad was trying to recruit him for a suicide mission and that he had retracted and decided to return home," Raed said. "They tried to brainwash him, exploiting his young age and innocence."

Tamer's father, Massoud Khawireh, called Islamic Jihad to demand an explanation. He said they apologized, arguing that they mistook the 10th grader for an 18-year-old.

"People like the sheikh [Ahmed Yassin] make the Palestinians seem like murders... I worked with Israelis since 1967. I am interested only in peaceful resistance," said Massoud.

Meanwhile, Knesset Member Natan Sharansky accused the BBC of a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism for its coverage of the IDF's arrest of a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber last week.

While most news organizations focused on the use of children by Palestinian terrorist groups, the BBC portrayed the event as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes," he wrote in a letter to the British news agency.

Sharansky said this "reveals a deep-seated bias against Israel. Only a total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups would drive a reporter to paint Israel in such an unflattering light instead of placing the focus on the bomber and the organization that recruited him."

The BBC press office declined to answer several questions from The Jerusalem Post concerning the incident, saying only, "We have received the letter and are looking into it."

Source: ICEJ News