PBS Islamic Lesson Plan Encourages Students to Identify with Radical Jihadists
by DR. SUSAN BERRY
BreitBart.com
13 Apr 2017
A PBS high school lesson plan encourages students to empathize with young Palestinian terrorists who want to become suicide bombers to achieve martyrdom and suggests they would rather die because Palestinians have less land and are restricted.
The “Dying to Be a Martyr” multimedia lesson plan is available free of cost to teachers and students at PBS Learning Media, reports Justin Haskins at the Heartland Institute. It utilizes videos titled “Martyrdom,” “Suicide Bombing,” and “Israel and Palestine,” as well as internet sites and primary sources “to examine the roots of the Middle East conflict.”
Students are asked to be able to understand “why individuals and groups sometimes turn to tactics of terrorism.”
At first, students are asked to learn about the connections that all three major faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – have to Israel. However, later on in the lesson, students view the video “Israel and Palestine,” and are asked to focus on 25 year-old Majdi Amer, who built a bomb in 2003 for a suicide bomber in Haifa who ultimately killed 17 people, and wounded 50 more, on a bus.
Students are asked to compare Majdi’s view of suicide bombing with that of 18-year-old Mohanned Abu Tayyoun, who wavers in carrying out his suicide mission and ultimately goes to jail in Israel.
In Part III of the lesson plan, students view an interview with Mohanned in jail and are asked to “identify how Mohanned views his life and how he feels it differs from the lives of Israelis (Jews).”
“Martyrdom leads us to God,” he responds. “I don’t want this life. When you become a martyr, your prize for carrying out the operation is going to heaven…We Palestinians prefer to die, just kill ourselves, rather than live this worthless life. Our lives are worthless. We are hollow bodies living a pointless life.”
The Rest…HERE
