NOW with Bill Moyers; 110; Interview with Marwan Zaloum, anti-Israeli terrorist; Playwright Mary Zimmerman

NOW with Bill Moyers – SHOW 110

March 22, 2002

NARRATOR:

This week on NOW...

An exclusive report on the Palestinian militia commander Marwan Zaloum.

He's trained suicide bombers, he's on Israel's most-wanted list, and he's preparing more to die for the cause.

ZALOUM: We don't want to pass the suffering, once more, to another generation. We see that the occupation started with our generation, it must end before we die.

Tonight we bring you a chilling report: a Palestinian militia commander who trains suicide bombers.

His name is Marwan Zaloum and he is on Israel's most-wanted list.

We're showing you this exclusive interview because this man and men like him will be a force to be reckoned with as the Middle East searches for peace.

Investigative journalist Bryan Rich met secretly with Zaloum in Hebron.

BRYAN RICH: His name is Marwan Zaloum and he's a commander in the militant group known known as Al Aqsa Brigades…he recruits and trains young Palestinians to kill and be killed in attacks against Israel...

Attacks like this one that killed 10 Israeli civilians.

Zaloum was a teenager when he began fighting Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Israel calls him a "terrorist" and he is on their most wanted list.

I met him at a secret location in Hebron just 40 miles from Jerusalem.

I wanted to ask him face to face if he is responsible for sending suicide bombers out to kill innocent people.

MARWAN ZALOUM: As a Palestinian fighter, I have played a role. My role, of course, given my experience, and this life I have lived... I was asked to be in a position of responsibility.

RICH: What he calls "responsibility" is training and sending young men and women to die; and, what he calls "martyrs," Israel calls "terrorists".

ZALOUM: When Sharon was threatening to open the gates of hell we were convinced that if we did not own planes, nor tanks, nor missiles, we had one strategic weapon, and that is faith.

We are obliged to use martyrdom operations. I told you, the gates of hell, we did not want to open them from the beginning. We say the martyrdom operation is a strategic weapon.

RICH: Strategic weapons like Iyad Kafeeshy, whose pictures hang on Zaloum's wall. There are others. I asked if he trained them too.

ZALOUM: For sure, each one, of course, carried his worries in his heart. Each one was like a moving cell. It is possible that each faithful person sees, until his end, or remarks that now, according to God's will, he is going to die, it is like a feeling, a premonition. Given his faith, he thinks more and more about hitting Israeli targets.

RICH: Zaloum told me that suicide bombers are driven by two passions; The desire to please God and to force Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.

ZALOUM: For sure, they occupy my land. For sure, they are destroying my people. For sure, they are practicing terrorism. And, for sure when my mother or my wife are stopped at checkpoints, when they want to pass peacefully in order to bring some food to the house, and they are humiliated and mistreated. For sure they need someone to defend them.

RICH: Just a few miles from where the interview takes place, our car is stopped at checkpoint.

Israeli soldiers are searching everyone...checking Palestinian identity papers.

They hold their weapons at the ready.

They know that the next suicide bomb could come from any one of these people at any time.

ZALOUM: I want to say truthfully and clearly that the whole Palestinian people are ready, and it is possible for the young man that we select or whose fate is to be chosen is very lucky, and it is possible that dozens of others will get upset for not being selected.

RICH: Who knows if everyone is as willing to die as Zaloum suggests, but one thing's for sure; the death toll keeps rising.

As violence feeds violence, one side strikes, and the other retaliates, and no one any longer knows who first pulled the trigger.

ZALOUM: But we say to Sharon, that if you have the tanks and planes to besiege Arafat, we are going to besiege you in your home. We will prevent the Israeli street from moving around. We will prevent the settler from moving anywhere.

RICH: His goal is to bring to Israel, what he says he and other Palestinians have lived through all their lives.

ZALOUM: Siege: shutdowns, curfews, school closedowns, daily humiliations, destruction of the economic infrastructure, that is on a daily basis. Shootings without any reason and prohibiting me, as a Palestinian, the child of this land and this home, from moving. That is provocation.

RICH: Provocation met by provocation. Outside Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, I see young Palestinians square off against Israeli tanks. They yell obscenities at the soldiers and stomp on the Star of David. I see an Israeli soldier, behind a tank, fire a rubber coated steel bullet, hitting a young boy. Back in Hebron I tried to ask Zaloum if he killed with his own hands?

My interpreter refuses to translate.

So I ask him directly, "Did he kill any in that exchange?"

ZALOUM: Yes.

RICH: Yes, he said, not one but two.

And what about the future?

ZALOUM: And we, as the brigades of Al Aqsa martyrs, will not retreat or stop until we realize the dream. We don't want to pass the suffering, once more, to another generation. We see, that as the occupation started with our generation, it must end before we die.

RICH: That could be any day for Marwan Zaloum. Even as he sends young Palestinians to die, he is himself a hunted man. An Israeli rocket kills a suspected militant in this attack in Ramallah. Looking around...I see the next generation looking at the pool of blood on the floor, I wonder if they too will be ready to die.