oyuki

Friday, June 29, 2007

Daughters of Lillith


Kathy Ainsworth[L] was considered to be a very nice and religious young lady. She was well liked and taught children in the 5th grade. Ahlam Tamini[R] comes from the other side of the world, the West Bank of Israel where she was a journalist. What links these two young women who seemed to have everything within their grasp, is the focus of their short lives - hatred of Jews.

Kathy was your typical Southern lady caught up in the turbulent times of a racially divided Mississippi in the 1960s. The Ku Klux Klan was active in the state against black Americans, white Americans who came down to support their brothers and sisters who happened to be black, and the Jewish congregations in Meridian and Jackson whom the KKK thought was the instigators of integration. After several bombings of synagogues and an attack on a rabbi, local police and the FBI decided to set a trap. Author Jack Nelson covered this story in his book Terror in the Night. So it was one night in 1968 that Kathy Ainsworth was sucked into this battle between the forces of order and the forces of hate. The trap was sprung on the suspected bomber whom informants working for the FBI had lured him in. By the time the last gunshot was fired, Thomas A. Tarrants III lay gravely wounded in the car while his partner in the attempted bombing, Kathy Ainsworth, lay dead beside him.

Ahlam Tamini is a native of Jordan, lived in Ramallah, studied at Bir Zeit, and was already a journalist by the age of 20. Her claim to infamy occurred on August 9th, 2001, when she acted as the guide for an Islamic suicide bomber in Jerusalem. Their target was a Sbarro pizza place crowded with women and young children. As the echo of the explosion faded away to be replaced by screams of anguish and pain, fifteen lay dead and another 130 wounded to one degree or another. Among those dead were children. Tamini was sentenced to sixteen life terms for her part in this hideous attack.

What brings this whole post together is the fact HBO is airing a documentary on Arabs in Israeli jails. The face HBO decided to put on this documentary belongs to none other than Ahlam Tamini, the killer of children. Hat-tip to LGF and Solomina for bringing to my attention this. Would HBO or its subsidiaries ever do a show about the actions of the KKK in Mississippi with that smiling picture of Kathy to entice people to watch? I doubt it very much, so why do it with this piece? Answers need to be found.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention that Palestinians are being murdered, starved, and tormented beyond what can be tolerated by human beings.