Reem Riyashi

"Last Wednesday, the [Israeli] security forces' sirens at the Erez crossing sounded when the Palestinian lady Reem Saleh Al-Riyashi approached them. She succeeded in deceiving the occupation soldiers who gathered around her, claiming that it was the platinum bolts in her leg that set off the alarm of the detectors. They gathered to check her thoroughly, but when she saw a number of soldiers around her, she blew herself up, causing the death and wounding of 14 soldiers. Reem met her death as a Shahida embracing her rifle, underlining with unprecedented courage her love for her two small children – her son of three and her daughter of a year and a half – martyring herself in defense of land, honor, family, and the [previous] Shahids.

Riyashi's children appeared on a 2009 episode of Palestinian children's TV show Tomorrow's Pioneers. The hosts create a musical re-enactment video of Riyashi's preparation for martyrdom that they display for the children in an attempt to explain that "her homeland [was more precious than] her own flesh and blood." The episode ends with Riyashi's eldest daughter vowing to become a Jihadi martyr when she grows up, and then Saraa delivers a stern warning addressed to "the occupier" that they "will continue in the footsteps of ... Reem Riyashi ... until [they] liberate [their] homeland."

Reem Saleh Riyashi (Arabic: ريم صالح الرياشي ‎ Rīm Ṣāliḥ ar-Riyāshī; 1981 – 14 January 2004) was a Palestinian mother of two from Gaza City who killed herself and four Israelis at the Erez crossing on January 14, 2004 in a suicide bombing attack. Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed that the attack by Riyashi was a joint operation mounted as a response to weeks of Israeli incursions into West Bank cities that had left about 25 Palestinians dead.

Unlike most bombers, Riyashi came from a wealthy family. She was the eighth Palestinian female suicide bomber, but only the second to have left behind children. Riyashi was the first female suicide bomber sent by Hamas whose spiritual leader at the time, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had initially objected to the involvement of women in such actions, altering this position shortly before his assassination by Israel in March 2004. She was the wife of a local Hamas commander and according to Israeli security sources she was involved in a extramarital affair with another Hamas commander from Gaza. Her suicide was planned by the two and it meant to clean her name and honor.