Samson the Shaheed!

During my second semester of grad school I wrote a paper and did a presentation on the subject of suicide bombers. (The presentation caused quite a stir and is a story in and by itself, which I hope to cover at a later date) My paper began with the premises that the common notion of suicide bombings having started with modern radical Muslims is completely false. I argued that suicide bombings/missions have been used around the globe as a strategy throughout history by men and women, religious and secular. Their common denominator was only that they were committed revolutionaries willing to die for their cause.

I went on to explain that probably the first record of a suicide mission was from the Bible when Samson gave his own life to destroy the ancient Philistines. (This was primarily quoted for the shock value, as in truth Samson was bound and about to die anyway. He never chose his final fate due to a predetermined conviction.) Then it was used by the secular Tamil Tigers and the Japanese Kamikazes.

Anyway, today I found out that a newspaper from the UAE published an article making this exact claim! (See below)

I am now consulting with my council as to what legal actions I should take against this blatant act of plagiarism...

"Arab Paper: Samson Was the First Shaheed

(IsraelNN.com) In an attempt to show that Jews and not Arabs are not to blame for inventing suicide killings, an Arab newspaper article claims that biblical hero Samson – known in Hebrew as Shimshon Hagibor – was the first 'shaheed' (martyr). The article in Al Itihad, which is published in the United Arab Emirates, quotes the passages from the Book of Judges which describe Samson's final act of heroism, in which he brought down a Philistine temple, killing the enemy leadership along with himself.

The article appears under the headline: "Suicide Bombings [sic] Began with the Jews and Did Not End with Kamikazes." It describes suicide attacks throughout history, mentioning the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War 2, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers and the Spaniards in the civil war of the 1930s as examples of forces which used this tactic."

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/127088