by Richard Stern

While Americans filled cars, trains, planes, buses, and streets en route to celebrate Thanksgiving with parents, grandparents, and friends, several thousand miles away a new wrinkle in family relations advanced the human story another notch. Fatimah Omar Mahmud al-Najar, a sexagenarian mother of nine, grandmother of forty, dressed for the occasion in white headscarf, green bandanna, and a belt of explosives, detonated the last, killing herself and wounding two Israeli soldiers, perhaps including the one who, seeing the old woman acting oddly, threw a stun grenade her way. On Hamas television, Fatima Omar's martyr video shows her wide-eyed and open-mouthed, holding an M-16 automatic rifle in her strong hands, her expression half puzzled, half fearfully eager. This grandfather of five, who experiences a strange, profound joy almost every moment he spends with his grandchildren, read this New York Times report with puzzled horror even when its final paragraph supplied what constituted the explanation of Fatimah Omar's final act:

Fathiya al-Najar, her oldest daughter, said that her son had been killed by Israelis, that her mother's house had been destroyed, and that another grandson was in a wheelchair with an amputated leg. "She and I went to the mosque," she told reporters. "We were looking for martyrdom."