Hamas To Host TED Talk On Innovations In Suicide Bombing

Organizers have declined to say whether legendary Qassam Brigades leader Muhammad Deif will give a TED Talk.

Gaza City, March 14 – One of the world’s leading practitioners in the art of strapping on explosives and detonating them in a crowd of civilians has teamed up with one of the most prominent organizations involved in spreading innovative ideas, in an effort to bring cutting-edge techniques to a wider audience.

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) organization announced today that it would hold a series of conferences  – its famous “TED Talks” – in the Gaza Strip this fall, featuring at least two dozen speakers from the various militant factions active in the coastal territory. The speakers will share their expertise and vision for the future of suicide terrorist bombings, knowledge and techniques that can be applied far beyond the narrow confines of the Gaza Strip.

While the formal annual TED conferences take place on the west coast of North America, the foundation that runs the conferences also licenses the TED name to qualified applicants around the world under the TEDx label. TEDx licensees must adhere to a specific format – notably that speakers must be dynamic, engaging, and not exceed 18 minutes. But the TEDx Gaza will represent the first time such a series of presentations will be conducted entirely in a language other than English, an achievement that fulfills one of the foundation’s educational goals.

“We’ve been struggling for years to take our materials to other cultures, and we usually pursue that end by translating the presentations into other languages,” said Chris Anderson the Sapling Foundation, which runs TED. “TEDx Gaza will be a watershed event for us, as it will allow TED speakers and materials to directly address audiences in the region and beyond.” For the TEDx Gaza materials Anderson specifically cited potential audiences in the Islamic State, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Nigeria, and disputed regions of India.

The list of speakers has yet to be finalized, partially owing to ambiguity over whether all of them are in fact alive. Local conference organizers have declined to say whether legendary Qassam Brigades leader Muhammad Deif will give a TED Talk. Deif was the target of multiple assassination attempts by Israel in that country’s attempt to impair Hamas’s ability to attack, and many analysts believe the most recent attempt this past summer finally succeeded; no reliable evidence of a living Deif has surfaced since then, but he had always been elusive and shadowy. Official silence has both fueled continuing speculation as to his fate and helped generate buzz over his possible attendance at the conference.

Possibly complicating matters, several of the most attractive speakers on the subject are wanted by Israel, which would probably not hesitate to exploit the knowledge that such people would be in a specific place at a specific time. Organizers hope to maintain a constant presence of numerous small children in all parts of the venue to discourage an Israel strike, a tactic that is tentatively scheduled as the topic for TEDx Gaza 2 next spring.