< Changing Worldviews.Commentary >

Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Sean Gannon

Journalist - Irish & Israeli Affairs
Posted September 13, 2004

The Strategics of Suicide Terrorism
The Future of the Hebrew State is currently in danger

Notably absent from the European condemnations of the Be’er Sheva bus bombing on August 31st were the once frequent references to the “hopelessness” and “despair” of life under “occupation” which drove the perpetrators to commit such atrocities. For instance in probably the most notorious example, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, asked to comment on the June 2002 Jerusalem bus bombing which killed 19 and injured 74, told the London Times that he felt a “degree of compassion” for men like the suicide terrorist Muhammad al-Ral who “must be so depressed and misguided” to perform such a deed. He was supported in this view later that day by Cherie Blair who said that “as long as young people [like al-Ral] feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.” More recently, Swedish MEP Cecilia Malmstrom told the European Parliament last March that it was feelings of “hopelessness and despair that created a breeding ground for recruiting suicide bombers” in the Middle East.

However, in the wake of the emergence of global Islamist suicide terrorism such beliefs have become impossible to sustain. The 19 terrorists of 9/11 were clearly not acting out of ‘despair’ and no one can seriously attribute the advent of the first British suicide bombers to the ‘hopelessness’ of life in west London. Neither has it been suggested that those who slaughtered scores of innocents on the streets of Morocco and Saudi Arabia were driven by depression nor that the suicide terrorists who murdered hundreds of Russians in the last week alone were attempting to escape a miserable earthly existence.

No, the spread of suicide terrorism proves that Islamist terrorists are driven, not by ‘depression’ or ‘despair’ but by fanatical hatred and religious zealotry harnessed to a political cause. Whether the target is a bar in Tel Aviv, a club in Casablanca or an airplane in Russia, their motivation for murder is the same - the eradication of the presence of infidels, ‘crusaders’ and Jews from the realm of the House of Islam. According to Hezbollah's Sheikh Nasrallah, all such actions are part of a struggle “to spread the concept of death for the realization of Allah's way.” And “without the act of suicide, this struggle is meaningless.”

The stark reality is that the use of suicide terrorism in the Middle East is the result of the strategic decisions of paramilitary commanders taken in the context of their terrorist campaigns. Palestinian terrorists in particular see suicide bombings as the most powerful weapon they possess in their anti-Israel arsenal, one which effectively neutralizes Israel's superior military strength and gives them some chance of success. As Hamas's Abdel Aziz Rantissi stated before his death last April, “suicide operations that shock can ensure that horror is sowed in the hearts [of the enemy], and horror is one of the causes of defeat.”

Therefore, to compare the act of suicide with that of suicide bombing is to confuse two completely separate phenomena. For psychologically speaking, a suicide is an exercise in complete self-effacement while a suicide bombing is the supreme Islamic act of narcissistic self-glorification. The objective of the suicide terrorist is not to extinguish his life but to extend it forever through attaining hero status on earth and achieving immortality in Paradise. Unlike suicide victims, they see their deaths, not as the outcome of a failed and worthless life, but as the zenith of their worldly achievement. They are motivated, not by despair, but by their hatred of the infidel and their love of themselves.

As Islamic law expressly forbids the act of suicide, there can be no doubt that these devout young men do not themselves see their deaths in such terms. In fact, the Islamist organizations are at pains to deny that their members are suicidal in the conventional sense. According to a spokesman from Islamic Jihad; “we do not take depressed people. If there were a one-in-a-thousand chance that a person was suicidal, we would not allow him to martyr himself. In order to be a martyr bomber, you have to want to live.” Hamas recruiters follow a similar line, rejecting anyone “who commits suicide because he hates the world.”

All of the evidence points to the fact that hopelessness has no part to play in the Islamist's decision to die in this way. Of 250 men interview by the journalist Nasra Hassan, all of whom were involved in perpetrating suicide operations, “none ... conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality.” One man who survived his attempt at death revealed to her the suicide terrorist's true state of mind; “we told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were, they would whip us to death. Those were the happiest days of my life.”

The only ‘despair’ in the entire barbaric business is that which the terrorists try to instil in the hearts and minds of their victims. Palestinian suicide terrorists hope that through their sustained assault on the Jewish state, they will break the national spirit and cause Israeli society to implode. As Abdullah Al-Shami of Islamic Jihad explained in December 2002, the use of suicide bombers “strikes at the feeling of security and places a deep threat in the Israeli heart ... it frustrates the plans of settlement and immigration to Israel ... it prods Israelis to move abroad, it hurts the Israeli economy and brings battle to the heart of the enemy ... the future of the Hebrew state is currently in danger due to its inability to deal with suicide attacks”

Only through following this strategy, he believes, will the Palestinians achieve their ambition of obliterating the national Jewish presence, not just in the West Bank and Gaza, but in the Middle East region as a whole. It is not, therefore, hopelessness which fuels horrible crimes like the Be’er Sheva bombing but the hope of achieving this ultimate goal.

© Sean Gannon 2004 Reprinted with Permission

Seán Gannon received his degree in history from University College Dublin and works as a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, publishing mainly in Ireland, Britain and Israel. He is currently preparing a book on Ireland's fraught relationship with the state of Israel since 1948 examining the influence of Catholic theological concerns on the controversy over Ireland’s recognition of Israel as a State in the 1940s and 1950s. He is also writing - Ireland for A New Extremism: The politics of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, which is a forthcoming study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London. He is a prominent advocate for Israel, being a featured writer with the Israel Hasbara Committee and chairman of the Irish Friends of Israel, a media response group which endeavors to correct the bias and error in the reporting of the Middle East conflict in Ireland.