Open Letter to a Suicide Bomber (original) (raw)
Palestinian Suicide Terrorism in the Second Intifada: Motivations and Organizational Aspects
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2003
Suicide terrorism has developed into a widely used tactic, and arguably one of the major strateigc threats facing some countries. This article explores various issues related to Palestinian suicide terrorism by presenting a two-phase model to explain the processes and factors underlying the development of Palestinian suicide bombers, and the execution of suicide bombing attacks. The model is applied to the case of suicide attacks that have occurred in the course of the first 21 months of the Second Intifada, from September 2000. The assumptions of the model are tested by taking an in-depth look into the various motives leading individual Palestinians to volunteer for suicide missions, and by discussing the activities and major functions of the organizations that have employed this modus operandi in the specified time frame. It will be concluded that while a counter-terrorism strategy aimed at targeting terrorist organizations may offer short-term gains, in the long run Israel will need to identify ways of removing or reducing the incentives that lead some Palestinians to volunteer for suicide missions.
This book addresses the Iraqi insurgency and the role of foreign fighters around the Zarqawi network. It documents the ideology, strategy, and mythology of "martyrdom operations" and its impact on the Iraqi civil war.
Human Bombing - A Religious Act by Mohammed
In this short paper I do not discuss why and how human bombing occurs, and instead argue three points. Firstly, that human bomber cannot be acting with sacred intention (in the path of God) because this intention is unknown to them and the groups that advocate such attacks; secondly, that the standard for sacred intention is impossible to uphold by the bombers; finally that, the bombers could be suffering from secondary trauma, therefore falling outside the criteria that legitimates human bombing because of the individuals illness. I contend that these points serve to dissolve the religious criteria and justification for human bombing.
Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim Human Bombers
To understand Muslim human bombers, we obviously must see them within the discourse of jihad, but also within that of sacrifices and gifts. .rom this perspective, human bombers act because of their social relationships whether these are with other human beings or with divine persons, conditions, or states of affairs. Human bombings are not, therefore, simply matters of utilitarian military tactics, but are also religious and social as gifts, martyrdoms and sacrifices. As sacrifices, contemporary human bombers deviate from the Muslim norm of the sacrificial restraint exemplified by Abraham, and conform instead to a new extremist view of sacrifice as total annihilation. The way we talk the talk sometimes conforms to the way we walk the walk; the way we think about things sometimes determines how we will act. The heavy artillery of political and religious rhetoric is routinely wheeled into place alongside the machinery of military combat. Thus, whether it is the world of the latest intifada or that of post-9/11, the struggle to control the discourse about these conflicts is just as fiercely contested on the battlefield of language and concept as are the material struggles related to them. In the pages of this publication, Raphael Israeli has argued correctly that careful use of terminology is therefore not a matter of mere semantics, but of great importance in order to discern notions and mindsets and their significance; 1 I agree. In thinking about al-Qaeda, for example, it is vital that we think about them in ways that illuminate what they do and are. Should they be thought of as hijackers and murderers, suicides and fanatics, or as martyrs, saints, sacrifices, and gifts? 2 And, what of the Palestinian bombers? Are they also martyrs or suicides, sacrifice, homicide, gifts and/or what Raphael Israeli calls them in the quest for a neutral designation human bombers? 3 This article attempts to assess conceptual issues thrown up by naming the particular phenomena that Israeli calls human bombs. It proposes that we need to pay greater attention to the sacrificial designations of these human bombings as made by Muslims and which are rooted in Islamic discourse. This is done not in the interests of celebrating the acts of the human bombers, but for the sake of understanding them better. When we