1. On the evening of June 1, 2001, Hamas member Sa’id Hasan al-Houtari perpetrated a suicide bombing attack at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv, a club frequented by teenagers. The attack, one of the most deadly of the current ongoing violent Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, resulted in the deaths of 21 Israeli civilians, most of them teenagers, and 83 wounded.
2. The attack was widely praised in the first issue of Al-Fateh. It published the text of the will written by the suicide bomber before he left to blow himself up. The will (probably written by those who directed him) was intended to glorify and extol the image of the suicide bomber and to encourage others to follow in his footsteps, promising the pleasures of paradise in the hereafter.
3. In the will the suicide bomber quoted a well-known verse from the political Islamic theories of Dr. ‘Abdallah ‘Azam, Al-Qaeda’s ideologist and the “spiritual guide” of Osama bin Laden, who is revered by Hamas:* “If preparation [for a jihad] is terrorism, then we are terrorists. If defending our honor is extremism, then we are extremists. If a jihad [holy war] against our enemies is fundamentalism, then we are fundamentalists.”
*His writings and posters bearing his portrait are distributed by Hamas throughout the Palestinian Authority-administered territories.
