Publications

On January 27, 2002, a terrorist bomb exploded in the handbag of Wafa Idris, a woman in her late twenties, on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem. The bomb killed Idris herself and an Israeli citizen, and wounded approximately fifty people. Idris, cast by the media as the first female Palestinian terrorist, was not intended to kill herself with her victims, according to the original plan of those who sent her. For some unknown reason, however, the bomb went off unexpectedly. Nonetheless, as part of the suicide terrorist cult that was greatly strengthened in Palestinian society during the al-Aqsa intifada, Idris was crowned a hero throughout the entire Arab world and was portrayed as a symbol of the new Muslim feminism. She became famous as a noble and heroic expression of the collective desire of Muslim women in general, and of Palestinian women in particular, to enlist in the struggle against the enemies of the nation of Islam, chief among them Israel.