Two Arabic publications are encouraging children to to view suicide bombers as role models. One is an Iranian newspaper for children printed in Kuwait and is also distributed to the Moslem world via the Internet, while the other is a children´s paper printed by Hamas. Details on the publications were released on the IDF Web site.

In July this year the Iranian children´s newspaper Mojitaba published the story of a suicide bomber from Jenin who blew himself up in a bus in Afula on November 29, 2001, killing three Israelis and wounding scores. The item that appears in the story of the week section is called "The Hero and the Holy War in Palestine" and describes the background of the suicide bomber, Samar Shawahneh, and details leading up to when he blew himself up.

It claims that during the holy month of Ramadan, Shawahneh prayed daily at the mosque and on the eve of the bomb attack remained at home, where he prayed and then broke the fast with his family. The story describes how he then set out for a "Zionist neighborhood" where he boarded a bus full of "Zionists" and blew himself up. The story claims the attack "brought fear to the hearts and homes of the Zionists."

After the incident, people thronged to his parents´ home to express their condolences and were greeted by his mother who bore a tray of sweets and said: "My son is the one who chose to die for Allah, it was his most important ambition, he refused to marry but told me to wait for a big wedding. Today is the wedding to celebrate his death for Jerusalem and Al Aksa."

In an article called "The Occupier" that appeared in a recent Hamas children´s newspaper, children are encouraged to view suicide bombers as supreme beings. The paper publishes the testimony of Ismail Abu Hamdan, killed on March 16 while planting a bomb near Netzarim in the Gaza Strip.

In it, he claims to have fulfilled his lifelong wish to die as a martyr for Allah, and he asks his mother to be happy as he will marry 72 virgins in Paradise, and he asks her not to cry. He also calls on his sisters and brothers to educate their children to attend prayers at the mosque and study the Koran and teach them love for Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the love of jihad. (© 1995-2002, The Jerusalem Post 12/23/02)