Forget that 72 virgins (or raisins) version of paradise.  For an adolescent male Palestinian terrorist, paradise is right next door——in an Israeli prison.

Yep, you read that correctly——paradise for a certain kind of teen ager is being jailed by the oppressive Israeli enemy, an enemy who will provide everything that a kid would want——decent food, a good education, digital television and even sports. In prison.

Mohammed Kharaz wanted to get away. He longed to escape the stretches of boredom broken by intense eruptions of violence that are a teenager's life in this strife—ridden city. So, for a break, he got himself thrown into an Israeli jail.

The idea wasn't even his, the 17—year—old confesses. He first heard it from a kid who sat beside him in class: If you get yourself arrested by the Israeli army, they send you to a prison with digital television, interesting books and even a decent soccer pitch. In short, everything you don't find in Nablus, a city cut off from the rest of the West Bank by a series of Israeli military checkpoints. . . .

"Ofer was like paradise. You could go to the toilet whenever you wanted, and we had a good time playing football and table tennis in the big courtyard. I started reading good books in there," he said, his hair short and gelled, and a hint of future stubble ringing his thin face.

Oh, and as a bonus, the Arab governments, who are always so broke, who don't mind that their citizens live in such dire hopeless poverty, manage to offer a stately monthly martyr's prize bonus to the family of the imprisoned.

Of course those Israeli checkpoints deter those whose motivations aren't always so benevolent; not that you'd learn any of this from  Human Wrongs Watch and No Amnesty International for Israelis.   These two latter organizations, along with their ideological kin, probably see the good life in Israeli prisons as another indication of Israeli oppression——corrupting the pure Arab youth and turning them from their way of life.

The perversions of the region go unabated, reinforced by the governments and the enabling racist organizations that profess to care about them.

Ethel C. Fenig   6 26 06