Trainwreck :: Evolution of a Nightmare
the tragedy of Wafaa al-Biss and the suicide cult that she chose to court ... or did she ... do we choose compulsive illness ... Wafaa Al-Biss was a very sick adolescent + young woman
Introduction
I first heard about Wafaa al-Biss on Xwitter via a pro-Israel account. Being a failed suicide bomber and one of the prisoners released in the Gilad Shalit deal, Wafaa drew my notice. I Google searched her name. I found Omar El-Qattaa’s instagram video of a present day Wafaa from March of this year. I did the math and calculated that one of my sisters has a daughter the same age as Wafaa. Somehow this made it even more relatable to me and strengthened my resolve to learn more about this grieving mother in the video.
The video showed a Palestinian Muslim woman, dressed in black Islamic dress, a hijab and an abaya. The woman spoke in Arabic and sat in a bombed ruins of a residential high rise apartment tower in Rafah City, Southern Gaza. She held a young boy’s shoe a soccer ball, a Spiderman stuffy, a toy machine gun. She told the cameraman between sobs of pure grief that her sons were beneath the rubble. No mother could help but be moved by such a thing. Politics does not matter then.
I discovered that Wafaa had led an extraordinarily horrific life, beginning with growing up in a pop culture of suicide bomber celebrity, then having a very hardline conservative father who refused to let her join the resistance and locked her in the house, forbidding her to attend university. One version of the story states that she had a fiancé, so her parents had decided to try to marry her off. Unhappy with her imprisonment and the severe beatings her father gave her to dissuade her from becoming a suicide bomber, Wafaa set herself on fire using the gas cooker.
Yes you read that right, Wafaa’s father beat her so severely she could not walk for several days, probably few weeks. Her mother knew about the beatings, given to dissuade Wafaa from joining the martyrdom cult. Yet she later—in an interview with Robert Baer—expressed pride in her daughter for her attempted suicide bombing and regretted her daughter did not succeed in killing herself and committing mass murder. According to one report, Wafaa’s fiancé decided to call off the engagement because of her accident and disfigurement. Wafaa received treatment from an Israeli hospital. Her parents thanked the doctors who saved their daughter, the daughter who then decided she wanted to blow up the hospital staff who saved her life. Martyrdom at all cost, Wafaa wanted. She received a 12 year sentence and served 6 years before being released as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, which saw all 27 female suicide bombers freed as part of the 2011 deal.
I wanted to know the story of Wafaa Al-Biss, I wanted to understand. So I dug deep as I could to learn everything I could.
Here is my telling of the evolution of Wafaa’s martyrdom nightmare. Be careful what you wish for, would be the biggest and simplest takeaway lesson from all this. The next important lesson would be humanise your enemy and think of people as either friends or not yet friends, rather than enemy.
Remember that this began because Islamists lied and they kept lying. And it continued because the lie worked for many people for a long time. Hxmas grew because it suited people in the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of way. All the politicians who say Hxmas must be eliminated previously said Hxmas was an asset because it destabilised the P/A. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Without further ado, I give you the evolution of a nightmare.
The Words of Wafaa al-Biss
“I believe in death … I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews … even babies and children.” — June 2005
“If my family had been normal, if I could have afforded to have been treated in America, if I could wear my hair and live my life like yours [talking to an American female journalist], I would never have thought about killing myself.” — June 2007
“We shall continue on this path of struggle and resistance and martyrdom, and this is what I told my comrades in the cell and this is what I told the children and this is what I am going to keep telling anyone who will ask me about my feelings.” — October 2011
“I am very proud of this [her 2005 failed suicide bombing]. I hope time will come and I will live again the moments in which I was tasting and smelling paradise.” — January 2012
“I will carry my explosive belt once again.” — January 2012
“I can’t obtain the very basic rights of getting appropriate treatment as a freed prisoner.” — March 2013
“I am living proof that kidnappings are worthwhile.” — June 2014
“Stop this war … Bring me back my babies” — March 2024
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,
It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills,
It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
[answer to the above riddle: the dark]
“If I had known what [my suicide bomber wannabe daughter] was planning I would have told the Jews.” — Ahmed Kamil
“Secretly recruiting someone's daughter is an insult to her family's honour.” — Robert Baer
“No one manipulated [Wafaa]. [My daughter] wanted this for a long time, even before [she set herself on] fire.” — Samir Al-Biss
Security people in Israel remember Wafa al-Biss, a 21-year-old Gazan who in 2005 befriended Israeli guards at the Erez checkpoint. She travelled several times on a special permit from Gaza to Be’er Sheva, where she had been treated at the Soroka Hospital. For some reason, one time the guards became suspicious and discovered that under her traditional black robes she had strapped a 22-pound bomb to her leg. She was sent to prison, but released in the Gilad Schalit prisoner swap. To the Palestinian schoolchildren who came to greet her upon her release, this pious woman said: “I hope you will walk the same path we took and, God willing, we will see some of you as martyrs.” — Uri Dromi, Canadian Jewish News, 2014
Above, Wafaa Al-Biss talks to a Gazan freelance reporter named Omar El Qattaa. Engulfed by intense grief, Wafaa talks about her sons and her post-prison release life. Below, you can see some footage surveying the damage to Al-Masry and surrounding area in Rafah City, Gaza. The IDF located hostages in this neighbourhood in a series of subterranean tunnels, and believed a large Hxmas brigade operated from a local base in Rafah City. The IDF had designated Al-Masry Tower a centre of Hxmas and other Islamist terrorist activity, and a assessed it as therefore a fair target for military strikes of combatants. The IDF reported having “precisely targeted a military asset” in Rafah, which it claimed was used by Hamas, emphasizing that “noncombatants in the area were evacuated before the strike was carried out,” according the WaPo. Local reports on Twitter confirm that non combatants received warning.
March 9th, 2024 :: IDF Strike Target :: Al-Masry residential tower in Rafah City, Southern Gaza, geolocation 31°16'42.9"N 34°15'08.0"E, tallest residential tower in the vicinity. Find Palestinian reports here.
What does human shield mean? Does it mean that a terrorist and his family can become a prey in his home? Does it mean that the IDF can impose collective punishment wantonly, as a way of punishing the entire society for the grave errors of a deranged clusterfcuk? Human shield means “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas, or military forces immune from military operations, according to to both the ICC and the US House of Representatives. As an American left wing media outlet writes:
But the fact that a Hamas leader lives in his own private home, attends a neighbourhood mosque, and seeks admittance to a local hospital does not constitute “embedding” for the purpose of “using Palestinians as human shields.” Indeed, the majority of leaders of most governments and political parties live in private homes in civilian neighborhoods, go to local houses of worship, and check into hospitals when sick or injured, along with ordinary civilians.
Furthermore, given that the armed wing of Hamas is a militia rather than a standing army, virtually all of its fighters also live in private homes and go to neighbourhood mosques and local hospitals.
That describes collective punishment.
STEP ONE :: 2005
21 year old Wafaa al-Biss went to Israel with the intent to kill as many Jews as possible. A member of the resistance group (Abu Rish Brigade, another armed wing of Fatah, according to Manuela Dviri writing in the Telegraph in 2005) Al-Aqsa Brigade (armed wing of Fatah, the P/A governing party), Wafaa had apparently sought and received extensive critical care treatment at an Israeli hospital for burns sustained during an explosion of a gas tank during a cooking accident at home in her Jabaliya neighbourhood. Gazans needed a special permit to enter Israel to receive medical care and Wafaa received one.
Wafaa obsessed over her dream to become a suicide bomber, to kill for All*h. She describes how she dreamed of this since she was a little girl, in a video interview (see below) with Leland Vittert in 2012.
CCTV footage shows her screaming and crying in agony after the detonator failed twice and she didn’t kill anyone. Condemned to live, once … twice … thrice. Most people can only dream of being spared death this many times. Imagine a person with cancer getting three saves from death—remarkable and extraordinary and uncommon. Waffa tried to die three times in a row and lived. Wafaa dreamed only to die. She was arrested and imprisoned to serve a 12 year sentence.
“Wafaa had been given permission by Israel to enter Israel to receive hospital treatment for severe burns at Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. On June 20, 2005, during one of her return visits, guards at the crossing became suspicious given that she was walking awkwardly, and discovered that under her traditional black robes she had strapped a 22-pound bomb to her legs.” — Wikipedia Entry on Wafaa Al-Biss
It’s tempting to think like a westerner and say prior to the explosion of a gas tank in her home during cooking Wafaa had a life plan, she had a fiancé. I don’t think that’s the case now. I think if Wafaa did have a fiancé, her father arranged that for his daughter without consulting her. I think also that she didn’t have a cooking accident she tried to kill herself and failed. After the accident, the fiancé left her because of the disfigurement. Deemed too ugly to marry, perhaps she thought her ugly scars made her some kind of involuntary virgin, and hence the perfect martyr—that’s one favourite western narrative to explain Wafaa. Remember though that Wafaa had succumbed to the suicide bomber contagion as a young girl, what story was she telling herself within the effervescence of the suicide contagion that afflicted her? In 2005 in The Telegraph Manuela Dviri wrote, according to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins … many of the [female terrorists] in Ward 12 of Hasharon Security Prison believes that a woman martyr “will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair”.
So, that sounds like female incel behaviour, doesn’t it?
One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: ‘Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shahid [martyrs].’ — Dviri 2005
If my family had been normal, if I could have afforded to have been treated in America, if I could wear my hair and live my life like yours, I would never have thought about killing myself. — Wafaa Al-Biss, 2007 interview with Judith Miller at Hasharon Security Prison
An Open Letter by a Gaza doctor, published in The Jerusalem Post
As a Palestinian doctor who has worked at Soroka hospital in Beersheva for eight years, I was outraged at the cynical and potentially deadly suicide bombing attempt by Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss.
On Monday she was caught at the Erez crossing from the Gaza strip wearing explosives stitched to her underwear and admitted that her goal was to kill dozens of people at the hospital including as many children as possible.
I conduct research at the hospital’s Genetic Institute, and Soroka has become my home away from home. I have built warm professional relations with my colleagues in the obstetrics and gynaecology department and other units.
I make a point, whenever I’m at the hospital, of visiting Palestinian patients. I also schedule appointments for other Gaza residents, and even bring medication from Soroka to needy patients in the Strip.
I have nothing but praise for the doctors, nurses and other medical staff at Soroka hospital. They show compassion, sympathy and kindness. I was therefore extremely shocked and upset to hear that Wafa Biss, from the Jabalya refugee camp, was wired with explosives to blow herself up at Soroka, a place where she had been treated with kindness and mercy.
On the very day she planned to detonate her bomb, two Palestinians in critical condition were waiting in Gaza to be taken for urgent medical treatment to Soroka. Wafa was sent to kill the very people in Israel who are healing Palestinians from the Gaza strip and West Bank. What if Israeli hospitals now decide to bar Palestinians seeking treatment? How would those who sent Biss feel if their own relatives, in need of medical care in Israel, are refused treatment?
As for Biss herself, she should have been a messenger for peace among her people, and should have been bringing flowers and appreciation to the Soroka doctors for healing her burns. Instead, she targeted the very people who treated her with such compassion. Israeli hospitals extend humanitarian treatment to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. These efforts continued when all other cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis came to a halt during the most recent intifada.
To plan an operation of this kind against a hospital is an act of evil. Children, women, patients, doctors and nurses were the target. Is this a reward for kindness? Is this an advertisement for Islam, a religion which respects and sanctifies human life? This is aggression and a violation of humanity.
What are we going to say if Israel now clamps down on Palestinian patients seeking medical treatment inside Israel? All of us know that we are suffering from collective punishments imposed by the Israelis. We now risk imposing additional suffering on Palestinians in need of medical care.
Soroka is a hospital that has opened its doors to treat Palestinians without discrimination, offering the best care available. I want to tell my friends and colleagues at Soroka that all the Gaza residents I have spoken to have expressed their condemnation for this evil and brainless act. At a time when we badly need to build bridges of trust and tolerance, Soroka is the only door left open when other hospitals are closed to Gaza residents.
We should all denounce any attempts to attack hospitals and harm their patients. The Biss family members have, themselves, issued a statement condemning the use of their daughter. I hope that despite this incident Soroka hospital will continue to be an oasis of peace and coexistence. That is the correct message to defeat the enemies of peace. — Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, OBGYN from Jabaliya Camp working at Soroka Hospital
APRIL 2006. The Daily Mail Sunday magazine did a feature on female suicide bombers, published in tandem with the documentary The Cult of the Suicide Bomber. Kevin Toolis filmed interviews with Wafaa and other female suicide bombers at HaSharon Prison. Toolis noted the trend in Palestinian to promote suicidal terrorists as heroes that kids should strive to emulate. Where North American kids idolise pop stars or film stars, Palestinian kids idolise suicidal mass murderers. The thing we see as oh that’s cute my kid is a goth, Palestinian parents see as, oh look that’s cool my kid wants to be a resistance fighter.
“Wafaa's eager embrace of a sex-filled paradise is not shared by her parents, who were uncomfortable with their daughter's hero worship of suicide bombers. ‘It's not right in our tradition for girls to blow themselves up. We don't agree that girls should be torn to pieces. Ours is a conservative society. We protect women. Even when she runs to the shops a woman should have a man to protect her,’ says Wafaa's father, Samir Al-Biss.” — Toolis-Baer 2006
In present day society maybe western parents can relate to Palestinian parents trying to keep their kids away from predacious influencers and predators. Western parents face pedagogy that has institutionalised evil and that promotes indoctrination and brainwashing as education and moral learning. Currently, we face educators and those working in a professional capacity trying to snatch our kids from us, right before our eyes. They turn our own children into alien enemies. What makes you think, westerner reading this, that Palestinian society has not faced a similar thing with an Islamist extremism driving people into a suicide contagion and psychologically manipulating them to believe committing mass homicide or a pogrom is their ultimate salvation and therefore aim?
At school, Wafaa started saying she wanted to be a martyr. Deep down it was a kind of teenage rebellion. If she had grown up in Britain she probably would have become a punk or a goch. But in Gaza, under the tight social constraints governing the behaviour of young women, the option she chose was to become a suicide bomber.
After Wafaa started attending militant rallies and funerals of suicide bombers her parents barred her from leaving the house. Finally, her father Samir physically beat her - leaving her unable to walk for 20 days.
The accident with the gas oven happened soon after the beating. Wafa was alone in the kitchen next to the oven when her mother heard her screaming. Rushing downstairs she saw that Wafa's clothes were on fire. Somehow the hose from the bottled gas canister to the family oven had become undone and leaking gas had somehow set Wafa on fire.
In Islam, suicide is an act of perdition that forever damns the perpetrator to hell and so it is easier to explain Waafa's ‘accident’ with the oven as a kind of innocent mishap rather than what it probably was - a suicide bid by a depressed teenager. — Kevin Toolis 2006, The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
JUNE 2007. In 2007 American Journalist Judith Miller visited Hasharon Security Prison and Wafaa gave Miller a touching and tragic story of misfortune and abuse. Wafaa described her life as impossibly difficult and leaving her no choice for survival but terrorism, ie to survive her hardship Wafaa needed to die whilst committing mass murder. What Robert Baer in his documentary interview saw through clearly, Judith Miller seemed to buy in her own interview. Wafaa portrays herself as an unfortunate victim in her interview with American Judith Miller, stating that she approached an Islamic Resistance group and volunteered to be a suicide bomber.
Now in the second year of a 12-year sentence, she was deeply distraught on the day she agreed to speak to me. She had never really wanted to become a suicide bomber, she told me tearfully. Life and bad luck had given her no choice. Born into wretched poverty in Jabaliya refugee camp1 in Gaza, one of 12 children, she said that much of her body and fingertips had been burned in a freak cooking accident at home the year before her failed mission. She had been coaxed, no, coerced into becoming a martyr by “Abul Khair,” an older man from the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade. “I wish I had never met him,” she said bitterly. — Judith Miller 2007, The Bomb Under the Abaya
So, how did Wafaa get to that place where suicide bombing seemed like the thing she needed to do to survive her existence? I have a few thoughts about this.
I think of the process as similar to an addictive one—remedial for trauma and psychological suffering to the point of detachment from reality and beyond.
I think of this kind of extreme and narcissistic hatred as a destructive + compulsive behaviour, like crystal meth or crack cocaine or alcohol or gambling or sex or social media — it’s the same hijack to the brain’s circuitry.
I think that in an honour culture such as the Arab culture, rejection has a deeper and more effervescent meaning.
I touched on this in a July 2023 long read piece I wrote about rejection, social isolation, and the pain of social death. Back then I wrote about the experience of shame and humiliation as a form of social death, however it bears mentioning now out loud as I tell you about Wafaa because that neurobiological processes figures prominently in the story of extremists and the rage that drives them to existential destruction.
Definitely Palestinian society and Arab culture seems at odds with what we know about healthy neurobiological societies. Islam as a culture in reality does not invite safety and acceptance. On theological paper it looks nice. However when you look at the map of Gaza you can see by the names of things what the values of the people are. Hassan Al-Banna features prominently, Mawlana Rumi does not. The people have chose their preferred method of problem solving and crisis management. Al-Banna predicted and would endorse the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries as a response to the state of Israel.



I brought forward last year’s post about the righteous bullying of Richard Bilkszto in this discussion about Wafaa to remind everyone that this effervescent lust for violence does not mean communion with G-d or goodness or a special higher purpose. That effervescent lust means cult, it means a collective delusion, in this case a very dangerous one stupidly enabled by western idiots. A cult is not G-d. A cult is a poisonous and abusive collective erected around a mentally ill leader or charismatic clusterfcuk thereof, ultimately the leaders motivate their followers to engage in increasingly self destructive behaviours. A cult is a dysfunctional organisation created to galvanise a destructive concentration of paternalistic hypermasculinity and worship of death. Cults dress themselves up in social justice finery to obfuscate their work of killing wantonly and inflicting suffering upon others for their own purification.
Imagine that you cannot find-know-commune with-feel-see G-d unless you have a stable regulated neurobiological connection with yourself and surroundings—ie that means a stable and regulated or regulatable nervous system and brain circuitry. Imagine that you need to love G-d with all of your bones, with every fibre of your being. Think concretely about what that means, think about what that means for your body to worship G-d with all of your bones and every fibre of your physicality. Think about all of those parts of parts of parts of parts, working together for a common purpose—LIFE. What if homeostasis was this state of being—all of your parts working together, not apart, not against one another.
Why do you think we pray, study scriptures or Torah? Did you not see their value beyond gang signals? Really, you didn’t? Wow, okay.
I will use Tolkien characters to ask my question, the existential question at the heart of the study of extremists.
at what point did Sméagol become Gollum and at what point can Gollum no longer go back to being Sméagol?
So, before I proceed further in Wafaa’s timeline of hatred I will just mention that I notice a pattern in the stories of these female terrorists. Sometimes they portray themselves as pauvre moi mistreated victims of a harsh society. Sometimes they portray themselves as decided kamikaze terrorists who want to die and kill ours and everyone else’s babies in the process, for Allah—nothing more or less. Sometimes both, at different times and to different interviewers. The Arab Islamist world of sh1tty men has learned about the west and knows the fundamental weaknesses and will prey on us. When we apply the fallacy Ben Shapiro famously talks about in his rants about Islamists, north americans mistakenly assume everyone thinks like them, we end up making ourselves useful idiots to those who seek our destruction.
So, the question of who is wicked does not seem obvious once I examine the details as it does before hand. Listen to a 21 year old Wafaa expressing remorse that she got caught, one wonders how to engage empathy for this suffering compassionately, that is without enabling the distorted thinking that creates it. Now listen to Wafaa describe her desire from schoolgirl days to do a martyrdom operation. Listen to her tell Robert Baer that she feels sad remembering her failure to kill herself on that June 2005 day.
Listen again to her describe her resolve to kill, herself and her designated scapegoat, including children. Having worked with the floridly psychotic and profoundly psychiatrically collapsed, I cannot engage with her words in a judgemental way — yes the expression of an intent and desire to die whilst killing those who saved your life and innocent children who were sick and injured like you does seem cold and evil. Yes it is an evil thing to say. She spoke that into being.
Wafaa said she would have no problem killing children. Words matter, we use them to speak ideas into existence. We struggle with this, oh do we struggle. As individuals. As communities. As societies. That’s the thing we grapple with, though, isn’t it? Words said, speech as expression and it’s power. Why do we guard the right to create things with our speech if we do not believe it has immense power to drive human action in profoundly horrific and devastating and wonderful and amazing and joyful and beautiful ways?
So Ben has a point, others do not think like we do. However their nervous systems have the very same building blocks and their amygdalas and brain stems respond to trauma and chaos etc etc just like we do — blood looks and functions the same. Poop and pee look indistinguishable across cultural tribes. Spinal fluid looks indistinguishable. Etc. A human is a human is a human. That is the point to take away from this, if nothing else. What you wish for your enemy you wish for your own children! Take care out there!
In The Bomb Under the Abaya, Judith Miller also makes herself a useful idiot for Shefa’a al-Qudsi. Here’s an excerpt, from 2007, below.
Then her youngest brother was arrested. “Mahmoud was only 15 but prepared to be a martyr” she said. He is now serving an 18-year sentence in another security prison. “My family and I were shocked. But I was ashamed to be doing nothing.”
Through a cousin, she contacted the shabbab — “the guys” from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, sponsored by the late Yasir Arafat’s secular Al-Fatah. Though she had not been politically active, she persuaded them at a local mosque to help her become a suicide bomber. They initially hesitated, she recalled, asking about her daughter.
“I told them that my body would be a bridge to a better future that my daughter would walk over,” she said. “Yes, I would die, but I would help give her a better life, a future without occupation. I was placing her fate in Allah’s hands.”
In the days before her attack, she kept her daughter close by as she read the Koran and prayed. While her family suspected something was wrong, since she was not normally religious, they said nothing. The plot was foiled only after an informant disclosed her plans to the Israelis, she complained bitterly. She was arrested the night before she was to receive a coded cell-phone message signaling the start of the operation: “The wedding has begun.”
Interestingly, a few months later, in March of 2008 on her release from prison, Shefa’a claimed to be a changed person who wants to use non violent means to work for change. Shefa’a cites despair and anger at the ongoing societal trauma of her society as her excuse for wanting to commit mass murder. I’m not sorry about what happened … at the time, I didn’t think as a human being. I thought only of revenge. Writes Miller, “Al-Qudsi said she was increasingly driven by a desire for revenge, and was particularly upset by Israel’s humiliation of Arafat, a Palestinian icon.”
The weakness in the Palestinian culture vis a vis the intolerance to shame and humiliation2, the communal effervescence of arrogance, the collective’s refusal to lean into the hardship of its perceived humiliation to reach the ease G-d promises, the leadership’s inability to take responsibility + have courage to harness transformation the Palestinian people hunger and thirst for—these forces have all converged to deeply disadvantage the Palestinian people and create unnecessary widespread suffering for them and for the human society around them.
STEP TWO :: 2011
27 year old Wafaa al-Biss, unremorseful failed suicide bomber and member of Al-Aqsa Brigade, is released as a part of the Gilad Shalit deal. Wafaa declared that she hoped for another Gilad Shalit every year until the resistance wins. As she passed a group of children who had come to celebrate her release from prison, Wafaa wished them to be martyred, ie killed. They respond that they wish to die for Allah.
“This is my daughter’s room,” said her father, Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, 55, as he showed visitors around a second-floor room in his home that he had prepared for her homecoming. Inside it were half a dozen portraits and posters of his daughter, pictures of Yasir Arafat, soft animal toys and a pink doll. “The room was empty, and it was destroyed when they bombed our neighbor,” he said. “I rebuilt it, and it cost me a lot of money because Gaza was under siege. The material was very expensive, but not more expensive than my daughter. And now her room is waiting for her.” Mr. Biss was uncomfortable when asked about his daughter’s actions, saying defensively, “I was surprised when she was arrested, and I didn’t know anything about it.” — Farrell and Akram, 2011 NYT
The Israelis … consider all Palestinians people to be terrorists, and that is why they are punishing the whole Gaza Strip.—Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, father to Wafaa
JUNE 2012. In 2012 Fox News reporter Leland Vittert interviewed Wafaa at her home in Gaza. She expressed a desire to commit mass murder for Allah. She expressed no remorse for her crime or her hatred. She appeared unrepentant in the interview with Vittert.
MARCH 2013. After her release Wafaa moved back home to live with her parents. She went to college or university to study journalism and rebuilt her life. She discovered that her society did not welcome the “sacrifice” she made for All*h. As Chana Ya’ar wrote in March 0f 2013, Wafaa discovered the reality of life for a female ex-con in Arab society.
“Our society views freed female prisoners as women who were raped,” [Wafaa] explained.
“My question is whether they think female prisoners were raped willingly or raped while their hands were cuffed,” she told Ma’an. “I can’t obtain the very basic rights of getting appropriate treatment as a freed prisoner,” she added, noting it was difficult for her to obtain medical treatment for third degree burns from a past accident because she is an ex-convict.
Wafaa did find a husband, and she had 2 boys. She lived in a 7-story residential building called Al-Masri, in the centre of Rafah City, Southern Gaza, with her family. Wafaa loved her kids, they were her reason for being and her whole life, as any mother understands irregardless of what political side of this conflict she favours. A mother is a mother and she ultimately only has one affiliation — humanity, ie. G-d. Note I said The Creator and not any d1ckhead who purports to be Her representative — the distinction matters muchly. Look at the urban street level map, imagine the density of population in this urban area, and then look at the map of terrorist tunnels the IDF continues to destroy.
24 JUNE 2014. Inge Gunther writes about Wafaa’s devotion to the resistance death cult, describing Wafaa and celebrating the captive of three Israeli teens. [Wafaa] would like to remind people [the she is living proof kidnapping is worth it] during her brief appearance this morning in the solidarity tent that various PLO groups have set up in Gaza City to support hunger-striking prisoners. She openly calls the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank "good news". She hopes that this will force the release of more prisoners, she says.
20 APRIL 2017. A shocking story from 2017 in the Jerusalem Post underscores the problem in the Palestinian culture of corruption and lying to get what you want from the unsuspecting well intended. An 8 year old Palestinian boy needed a bone marrow transplant from his older brother to stay alive. His brother came in to the hospital and Shin Bet took precautions to monitor the teenager. Shin Bet discovered that the teen was secreting communicating with Hxmas to carry out a terror attack at the hospital. The police took the teen away, leaving the young cancer patient without his donor. The doctor had to beg the police to bring the terrorist back for the procedure so the young patient could have his life saving treatment.
How do Israelis make peace with Palestinians when lies and hatred and worshipping of and praying for death have become institutionalised in their culture and society?
15 JUNE 2021. “Wafaa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss was burned all over her body from a cooking fire. She had also been raped as a child. Her parents sent her to be a suicide bomber for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Again, her rape was the sin that humiliated her family and destroyed their honor. In Islam, it is believed that a woman brings rape upon herself, as she has not guarded her virtue as well as she should have.” — Christine Rinehart, Marine Corps University, Quantico
Did her parents send her to do Islamist Jihad? Did she have some kind of psychosis from childhood that made her think Islamist Jihad was a good thing to strive for? Her father has said that is not the way of his people and culture to have their women become terrorists. What story do we believe? And who wants me to believe this narrative about parents wanting their daughter to be a terrorist because she has no human worth since she was raped or disfigured in a terrible kitchen accident etc etc? Yes, that honour culture exists in the Islamic world. Do we know for certain that played out in the story of Wafaa? Was she indeed raped as a child, or did Quantico add that dramatic detail for impact? This removes her agency, it makes her a thing bounced around between the will of men around her. Where was her mother? Where is the father of her children now?
Why the need for America World Police to make every woman a damsel in distress?
FINAL DESTINATION :: 2024
Freelance photographer Omar El Qatta3 has captured an intense and tragic moment in Wafaa’s present day life. Scroll up to the beginning of this article remind yourself what raw grief looks, be a human and go look, I dare you. The same age as my sister Nancy’s oldest child, 39/40 year old Wafaa al-Biss is sitting amidst the ruins of her bombed out home in Gaza, inconsolable, sobbing and devoured by grief. She is holding a young boy's shoe, a soccer ball, a Spiderman stuffie and, ironically, a toy automatic rifle. These are her son’s toys. Her sons are beneath the rubble. She is telling us about how beautiful her boys are and how she loves them. She does not know if they are alive or dead and she cannot get them out. She is begging anyone who will listen to help get her babies. She wants to hug them if they are alive. She wants to bury them if they are dead.
It is March 9th, 2024 when this scene of horror unfolds in slow motion in the flash of a few second. It is four months after Wafaa's dreams came true (October 7, 2023) and there were "more Gilad Shalits" ... "including babies" ... 240 "Gilad Shalits in fact ... and a horrible horrible slaughter. Wafaa does not seem happy that her wishes came true, though, even though reality delivered and exceeded her expectations beyond all measure. Interesting how the things we think we want end up being the worst things that ever happen.
Quran 2: 216 :: Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know.
Wafaa seems upset to get what she wanted and prayed for so many years and so publicly. Wafaa al-Biss said she would gladly sacrifice her life to kill Jews. I don't suppose she imagined surviving the sacrifice of her childrens' lives, did she? No, she was happy to force others to pay for her hatred with the forced violent sacrifice of their own children, sometimes whilst they watched in the case of October 7th, and Wafaa did not consider what that would mean on a human level in the terms and language of herself and those whom she loved. Her boys being martyrs now —isn’t that joyful thing for the suicidal culture Wafaa chose for her life?

A passing comment on X defended the bombing of Wafaa’s home with the IDF’s discovery of subterranean Hxmas military data centres underneath UNRWA Headquarters. An investigation into the urban geography of Gaza tells me a complicated story about Levantine urban warfare: Al-Masry residential tower in Rafah City, Southern Gaza, geolocation 31°16'42.9"N 34°15'08.0"E, where Wafaa and many others lived. According to Airwars, a website that documents destruction in Gaza by the IDF, Al-Masry tower took a bombing hit on October 12, 2023. IDF Press Release for October 12 indicate air strikes targeting senior Hxmas commandos in Rafah. Reports indicate that the IDF eliminated Bardawil, a senior Hxmas leader. Bardawil appeared on a US government list of Hxmas terrorists. All that said, the damage to Wafaa Al-Biss’s home occurred on March 9, 2024 and an overwhelming amount of available evidence points to March as the strike date of Al-Masry tower in Rafah, the tallest building in the area and a known location for use by Hxmas and the Islamist Resistance.
I’ll leave it at that for today. This took me five days to research and think about and write. My brain broke writing this. My heart also. I cried often. I cried every time I sat down to write this piece. I cried each time I learned a terrible piece of Wafaa’s story. I made sure I read the most terrible things about her father beating her to the father of my own daughter, I force him to listen and carry this with me, he does not like it and that is too bad, this is a human story and it belongs to everyone with a daughter. Our daughter did have mild self destructive tendencies during an intense phase and parenting a female human is not for the faint of heart, it takes a set of gonads let me tell you, I have parented both male and female humans—they never belong to me they belong to G-d and themselves, they were and are a sacred gift entrusted to me, not a thing to use to fill my unmet needs.
I am not certain this story ends here. I think it begins here. I do not ask for these things they are give to me, these stories to weave together. Maybe I have always been a kind of Vairë, Tolkien’s cosmic Weaver, tasked with weaving the stories of the world together. I do not know. Anyway.
As I journeyed through Wafaa’s life I felt increasingly sad for her and many other Palestinian people, exploited all around by bad faith actors and the narcissistic abusers lurking in plain sight. This story tells the tale of war, the story of terror, the story of hatred. This story shows you the problem, in painstaking detail. In my hospital days, in order to treat the illness, we had to pinpoint the problem causing the illness. We would take a swab of the wound bed for a Culture and Sensitivity Clinical Test, in order to assess microbial response to antibiotic and choose the appropriate one for the job. This requires precision at the time of collection and processing and interpreting. The thing is collecting an accurate uncorrupted specimen and then growing it in a culture to see what happens. You know, like opening a line of communication with your opponent. How do we make peace without talking to our enemy about all the thing we disagree on?
Maybe peace is a bit like the Culture and Sensitivity test?
I want to ask readers — do you think Gollum could be turned to goodness, or do you think he was doomed to a choice he made long ago? At what point in Sméagol turned Gollum was the point of no return? I think Sméagol-Gollum a perfect literary + dramatic portrayal or symbol of the unfortunate outcome at an individual level of choosing evil, and so the story warrants extensive study.
My Personal Thought. I try to understand things foreign to me by breaking them down into smaller doses or by relating them to something I know. Everyone is my child or my sisters’s children or my daughter’s children. This is how I guard myself from falling into dehumanisation, by remembering separation is an illusion. Wafaa Al-Biss is the same age as one of my sister’s daughters. This realisation floored me at a bus stop. It gave me pause to really think about humanity and values. It gave me pause to think about choices we make to express those values—we flaunt them like a gang signal.
My sister had a very very difficult childhood, of all of us girls she suffered the most, that is not in question, it is established fact—she was youngest when the chaos broke loose and ruptured the family; early maternal withdrawal is a massive trauma for a child, for the entire life of the person, even in adulthood the trauma extends and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Yet, at no time did my sister want to blow anyone up or kill anyone’s children. She never saw the answers in mass destruction. None of my siblings did. My brothers received violent treatment from their father and did not live lives as violent men. Their father did receive brutal treatment as a child, undoubtedly it contributed to his outcome as a domestic abuser, however it bears mentioning that he never wanted to commit mass terror. The notion that extreme hardship can excuse extreme horrific abuse mocks all who survived childhood trauma with grace and poise and human goodness. We exist inside the cradle of the larger society that birthed us and our mothers. The values of that larger society inform our choices. Peace begins there, perhaps?
Observations From My Research
NB: A word about the video of Wafaa Al-Biss. The video is from taken Instagram, I have cropped the captions out and provided you the visual - I am not an Arabic speaker so can't really entirely trust the captions that a hostile stranger provides and they aren't important to this post you can see her distress and pain and grief without knowing what she is saying.
Notice the dramatic music playing underneath the voice track?
It’s subtle, a kind of psychological manipulation. It does add to the emotional impact of the video as a piece social media content. This is when journalism becomes propaganda—when the creators seek to elicit a particular emotional response, rather than inform. Note I am moved by information more than dramatics, as is evidenced by my response to the Toolis-Baer documentary. Also note, a dramatic heart tugging bit of social media crafting led me to even be moved to care about this and want to learn more. So, yes, do you also notice how most Arab Muslim content created for the western world feels like a dramatic soap opera from a violent war zone? I feel like that mum whose adolescents are constantly trying to mess with me to get a thing when I engage with Arabic media or content or anything Palestinian. Wanton adolescent style manipulation provokes my apathy, it blocks compassionate investigation. This works against peace when Arabic media is trying to lie to the non Arabic speaking world as a matter of political and cultural convention.
Should we make peace with those who cannot truth consistently? Peace demands truth, it demands honesty. It demands emotional maturity. It demands taking responsibility when you want to give blame and serve shame like a special sauce on all your words.
I tend to mistrust any media or journalist with a consistently deliberate and disingenuous bias against Israel and with a bias toward gender morality including queerism. I treat Arabic language media and social media sources as hostile to me and brain worm infested until proven otherwise. I have too often seen the Arabic and English language versions of the same thing and they’re different and because of the general overall contempt and hatred they have for the west and also their loose attachment to honesty. I tend to regard with intellectual hostility anyone who manipulates me as a rule as well as anyone who treats me like lesser than or like I am stupid. When you decide to lie to me you do all those things. Note deliberately withholding facts is lying, manipulation is lying. Arabists and Islamists think Anglophones are dupes and they create content to manipulate us and exploit our good will, which they then hold in contempt.
“In death, female bombers have special glory. They have a potent sexual aura, like western film stars. Wafaa’s teenage ambition was to join the Shahidat, female martyrs. And she shopped around for a militant group who would make her a star.” — Robert Baer
Final Thoughts
1. There's evidence in media coverage of using the stories of these female suicide bombers to further a particular political narrative. Israel v. Palestine has become like Apple v. Samsung to Americans and Canadians. Pick your favourite Hollywood narrative and go.
2. The female suicide bombers/extremists themselves manipulate the goodwill of westerners when it comes to women, because malignant narcissists do that. This is a contagion of a disturbing mental illness. This is a suicide contagion plaguing the Palestinian world.
3. Westerners are too naive to see the truth, they convince themselves it's racist or islamophobic to see the situation realistically — that is called narcissistic abuse by the way. Victimhood bullies are typically malignant narcissists. This is part of the illness, not a sign of oppression. We must stop looking at this human situation through a western political academic lens, through a tribal identity lens—it harms humanity a lot.
4. Wafaa played Judith Miller and others who portray female suicide bombers as a victim pretty well. A quick check reveals Judith Miller has a history of journalistic naïveté, or more fairly to Miller, perhaps she had too a strong case of confirmation bias to overcome. Anyway. Westernism lives. Sexism lives. When they combine they can wear many costumes and therefore move freely.
5. The Cult of Female Suicide Bombers and Terrorists seems to border on the fetishistic. Agitprop portrays these women in a particular caricaturesque manner. I see the lightened skin etc and I can't help but feel a tinge of sexual fantasy or some weird XY d1ckhead horsesh1t when I see this stuff around. Note that seeing women as perpetual damsels in distress who can never own their crappy choices is a sexist fetish.
6. Both sides of the Israel v. Palestine conflict seek to manipulate public opinion in Canada and the USA and in Europe—in different ways and to differing degrees and for different ends.
7. I wonder what is written about Wafaa Al-Biss in Arabic and how it differs from the English and European reports about her.
Peace sounds like a great + noble objective, except when we destroy peace as we try to raise awareness about the need for peace and except when we totally ignore the thing disturbing the peace in an effort to keep and make the peace and except when we just make up stuff that makes us feel good about ourselves and call that peace and except when we sh1t all over those individuals trying to make peace in the midst of war and horror and brain worm stew pretending to be public discourse or the media.
I will end with a quote from Gershon Baskin.
“There is no military solution to this conflict and there has never been one. There must be a new path to a negotiated end of the larger conflict, but it begins by ending this war, Israel withdrawing from Gaza, Israeli hostages coming home and the establishment of a secure border between Gaza and Egypt. That would pave the way for the creation of a responsible and legitimate non-Hamas government in Gaza, an Arab-led international force in Gaza for a limited period of time, new elections in Palestine, new elections in Israel and then a regional peace process that will bring about the two-state solution, with an end to the Israeli occupation, a free democratic Palestine, and freedom, peace and security for all.” — August 19, 2024
If you want change, you have choices — be that change and lead with love and compassion, pray for change, pray for the hardened hearts of leaders and decision makers and influencers to soften and grow compassionately and courageously wiser. Your opining changes nothing, your examples changes much, your attempt to understand your enemy can free an entire cosmos inside your own mind, and lead you to real solutions you never imagined possible. You must see the possibility, remain hopeful, believing, and continue to try even and especially when you do not feel like it.
The arrogant cannot rise when they fall and the humble can. Choose wisely.
References
Ables, Kelsey, Adela Suliman, Cate Brown, and Itay Stern. 2024. “Canada, Sweden Resume UNRWA Funding; CIA Chief Meets Mossad Head for Talks.” The Washington Post, March 9.
Anon. 2005a. “Attack by Female Suicide Bomber Thwarted at Erez Crossing Would-Be Suicide Bomber Is Caught and the Charge Detonated by IDF Sappers.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved (https://www.gov.il/en/pages/attack-by-female-suicide-bomber-thwarted-at-erez-crossing-20-jun-2005).
Anon. 2005b. “Special Information Bulletin.”
Anon. 2008. “Foiled Suicide Bomber Now a Peace Activist.” NBC News.
Anon. 2011a. “Freed Wafa Al-Biss Tells Gaza Children to Follow Her Example.” Ahram Online, October 19.
Anon. 2011b. “The Palestine of Wafa Al-Biss.” Jerusalem Post Blog. Retrieved (https://www.jpost.com/blogs/the-warped-mirror/the-palestine-of-wafa-al-biss-366590).
Anon. 2011c. “Would-Be Bomber Tells Gaza Kids to Be like Her.” Ynet News, October 19.
Baskin, Gershon. n.d. “Gershon Baskin.” Retrieved (https://gershonbaskin.org/).
Dromi, Uri. 2024. “The Unfortunate Reality of Profiling.” The Canadian Jewish News, November 17.
Dviri, Manuela. 2005. “‘My Dream Was to Be a Suicide Bomber. I Wanted to Kill 20, 50 Jews. Yes, Even Babies.’” Telegraph, June 26.
Farrell, Stephen, and Fares Akram. 2011. “Gaza Set to Embrace Released Prisoners.” New York Times, October 14.
Gunther, Inge. 2014. “The Long Wait.” Berliner Zeitung, June 24.
Mahan, Sue, and Pamala L. Griset. 2012. Terrorism in Perspective. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Mihailescu, Laura. 2013. “Blasting into Fame. Female Terrorists Make a Statement.” New University Lisbon.
Miller, Judith. 2007. “The Bomb Under the Abaya.” Hoover Institute, June 1.
NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. 2014. Hamas’ Use of Human Shields.
Rinehart, Christine. 2021. Escaping Atonement in Sunni Islam Death by Jihad for Deliverance. US Marine Corps.
Stewart, Catrine. 2011. “Failed Bomber: ‘I Don’t Regret What I Did. It Was an Honour.’” The Independent, October 24.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. 2011. The Gilad Shalit Prisoner Swap.
Toolis, Kevin. 2005. Cult of the Suicide Bomber 2. Many Rivers UK.
Weinberg, David. 2017. “Know Comment: Exploited by the Enemy.” Jerusalem Post, April 20.
Ya’ar, Chana. 2013. “Tough To Be Female Terrorist Ex-Con in Gaza.” March 20.
Zunes, Stephen. 2021. “Have ‘Human Shields’ Accusations Become an Excuse for War Crimes?” The Progressive Magazine, June 17.
Note Jabaliya is an urban agglomeration that began as a refugee camp and is now more a residential neighbourhood.
aka honour culture