Sally Field Meet Mariam Farahat, Reem Riyashi, Samira Jassim

An item appearing in a recent issue of National Review reminded me of something the actress Sally Field felt compelled to say at an Emmy Awards ceremony a year and a half ago. As one of those Hollywood celebrities with a pathological need to use their accidental platform to broadcast their asinine opinions, she suggested the following.

"If mothers ruled the world, there would be no god-damned wars in the first place."

I offer a couple of past news items on the subject.

Mariam Farahat, who was elected to the Palestinian parliament, was one of Hamas' most popular candidates. In Gaza, Farahat is known as Um Nidal, or Mother of the Struggle -- a mother who sent three of her six sons on Hamas suicide missions against Israeli targets.
She is most famous for her presence in a Hamas video, showing her 17-year-old how to attack Israelis and telling him not to return. Shortly afterward, he killed five students in a Jewish settlement before he was killed himself.
Um Nidal's home has become a shrine to her dead sons, with admirers and other members of Hamas often dropping by.
She is now a politician, but she says violence is still an option. And she does have three sons who are still alive. If necessary, she says, they will follow in their brothers' footsteps.

And

A 22-year-old Palestinian mother of two small children, Reem Riyashi, pretending to be disabled, killed four Israelis at a Gaza border crossing yesterday after duping soldiers into allowing her a personal security check rather than going through a metal detector.

And now the NR item about a metaphorical, if not biological mother.

The depravity of Islamofascism, the depravity of the jihad, knows no bounds. The latest illustration of this comes from Iraq, where lives a woman named Samira Jassim. She is known as “Um al-Mumenin,” or the “Mother of the Believers.” She organized the rape of more than 80 women: so as to force them into suicide bombing. First, they would be raped. Then they would be told that there was no escape from the “shame” of this except “martyrdom”: a self-detonation that murdered others. As President Bush continually said, if this is not evil, then there is no evil. And civilized people have no choice except to keep fighting it.