SENATOR EVA BRAUN

Hamas ‘mother of martyrs’ runs in Palestinian poll.
GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas has chosen a mother of three sons who died fighting Israel to run for Palestinian parliament in a poll where the Islamic militant group is expected to mount a serious challenge to President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. Mariam Farhat, widely seen as an icon of the Palestinian uprising, will join a slate of male Hamas leaders to contest a legislative election due in January in which Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, is taking part for the first time.
Farhat, 56, could give an added boost to Hamas as she has strong militant credentials, including an appearance — carrying a gun — in a video in which she advised one of her sons, Mohammed, on tactics before he attacked a Jewish settlement.

Mohammed, 17, killed five Israelis before he was gunned down in the 2002 assault in the occupied Gaza Strip. Farhat’s eldest son, Nidal, was killed in 2003 as he was preparing for a separate attack. A third son, Rawad, died earlier this year in an Israeli air strike on his car, which was laden with rockets. Three other sons are still alive. ...

At home, where pictures of her dead sons, including one that shows her armed with an assault rifle, adorn the walls, Farhat said Hamas’s decision to participate in mainstream Palestinian politics did not contradict its military goals. “The Jihadist project completes the political one and the political project cannot be completed without Jihad,” she told Reuters, using the Arabic term for “holy struggle” against the Jewish state.