Guarding the Secrets: Palestinian Terrorism and a Father's Murder of His Too-American Daughter [Hardcover]

Ellen Harris (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 1995

Recounts the terror-stricken life and murder of sixteen-year-old Tina Isa, who was condemned by her other family members for becoming Americanized, before her father, an accused Palestinian terrorist, stabbed her to death. 20,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This true-crime study spotlights the clashing of cultures. TV reporter Harris (Dying to Get Married) relates the tragic story of 16-year-old Tina Isa, murdered in Missouri in 1989 by her father, Zein al-Abdeen Hassan Isa, with her mother's help. The father, from a backwater Palestinian town on the West Bank, was a suspected member of the terrorist Abu Nidal organization, and his home in St. Louis had been bugged by federal agents. Thus the murder was taped, and the parents received death sentences. The proximate cause of the slaying was Tina's attempted assimilation into American culture?her wanting to become independent, to get a job, to date an African American teenager?but the root causes, according to the author, lay in the misogyny of Islam and in the clannish nature of rural Palestinian society, where the "honor" of the family is more important than life itself. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Harris's second true-crime book (following Dying To Get Married, LJ 9/15/91) can be read on many levels; on the most obvious one, it is a well-researched account of the horrible stabbing death of 16-year-old Tina Isa at the hands of her abusive and uneducated father, Zein Isa. It also documents the reach of Palestinian fanatic Abu Nidal's international terrorist organization; Zein and several relatives worked for Abu Nidal in the United States, and this involvement may have been an underlying cause of Tina's murder. On a third level, Harris's book is a study of the clash between Palestinian and American cultures. Through extensive research and interviews with Palestinians on the West Bank and in the United States, Harris attempts?successfully for the most part?to explain Palestinian cultural beliefs and thereby to illustrate that Zein deviated from predominant practices not only when he murdered Tina in a so-called "honor killing" but frequently throughout Tina's life. This well-written and well-documented book is recommended for public libraries and others with Middle East collections.
-?Ruth K. Baacke, Whatcom Cty Lib. Sys., Bellingham, Wash.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st Printing edition (April 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0025483358
• ISBN-13: 978-0025483354
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,372,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gurarding the Secrets, July 24, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Guarding the Secrets: Palestinian Terrorism And a Father's Murder of His Too-american Daughter (Paperback)

In November 1989 in St. Louis, the FBI inadvertently tape recorded the entire episode of a teenage girl's being killed by her Palestinian father and Brazilian mother (the Feds were looking for evidence of terrorism, which they also found). In a ghastly eight-minute sequence, Zein Isa stabbed his daughter Palestina thirteen times with a butcher's knife as his wife held the girl down and responded to Palestina's pleas for help with a brutal "Shut up!" The killing ends with Zein screaming "Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! . . . Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!" By this time, she is dead.

Harris, a St. Louis television reporter, has done admirable spade work going through the court transcripts and interviewing everyone connected to the case in an attempt to piece together the interlocking stories of family murder and active support of Abu Nidal's terrorist organization. In addition, she successfully conjures up the small and exceedingly unpleasant world of Zein Isa and his family of rabid anti-Americans living right in the American heartland. The murder culminates their lives of frustration, greed, and vulgarity. Unfortunately, Harris spent more effort digging up information than she did writing the book; so the more-than-casual reader must read and reread its pages to piece together the sequence of events and the scope of the Isa family's involvement with Abu Nidal. Doing so repays the effort, however, for Harris has compiled a treasure trove of materials on two usually elusive subjects.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1995

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrorism's broad inroads, September 22, 2001

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Guarding the Secrets: Palestinian Terrorism And a Father's Murder of His Too-american Daughter (Paperback)

This book starkly frames the force of hatred which overtook New York City and the world with the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It relates specifically to Zein Isa's November 1989 murder of his daughter, Palestina. The West Bank immigrant and his Brazilian wife co-conspired in the brutal St. Louis murder of their teenage daughter, whose friendships they believed had endangered their terrorist plans.

In their search for terrorists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation inadvertently taped the actual killing. Zein Isa and his wife were sentenced to death.

The book reveals much about the village life in the West Bank, where most families, according to Maria Zein, belong to radical military groups whose ultimate goal is to destroy Israel. Many West Bank residents are actually "refugees from other countries." According Maria Zein's account, her husband knew "men from Syria, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi." Maria Zein told the author that her husband had traveled from the West Bank village of Beitin, to Jordan, Syria, Libya and Bolivia. He lived undetected for years in the US, and also claimed to have lived in Europe.

The book reveals twisted morals, which condone murder for the sake of family honor. It unmasks intense hatred that evolved into conspiracies to slaughter Jews, blow up the Israeli embassy in Washington and to murder Tina because she posed a threat to these plans.

It also exposes the frighteningly broad inroads that the Abu Nidal terrorists have made into American cities and life. Alyssa A. Lappen

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horrifying!, July 30, 2002

By 

Kelley Hunt (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Guarding the Secrets: Palestinian Terrorism And a Father's Murder of His Too-american Daughter (Paperback)

This true-crime story is written in the sensationalistic fashion typical of the genre. It grabs your attention right from the beginning and doesn't let go.
The author describes the irony of Tina Isa's life: to any otherAmerican family she would have been cherished as a charming, friendly, hard-working teen...
The author also describes the network of Palestinian terrorist groups living in the U.S. and the role they might have played... This story is gripping and very informative because the author did a lot of research and provides so much background information about the Palestinian culture, the lives of generations of the Isa family, the Abu Nidal terrorist organization and more.
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