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Sean Gannon is a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, specialising in the relationship between the two countries. He is currently preparing a book on this subject and writing the chapter on Ireland for a forthcoming study on the interplay between Anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Europe since 9/11.
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By Sean Gannon
May 26, 2003
Listening to Jack Straw's unequivocal condemnation of last Sunday's bus bombing in Jerusalem, one could not help remembering the not-so-clear-cut comments he made after a similar outrage exactly eleven months before. In an interview with The Times on the former occasion, he spoke of his "compassion" for young men like Muhamed al-Ral, the Hamas terrorist who had massacred 19 Israelis in a suicide attack that morning. He must, said Mr. Straw, "be so depressed and misguided" to carry out such an atrocity. Indeed, this seemed to be the pan-British view that day; a few hours earlier, Cherie Blair had expressed her sorrow that men like al-Ral had "no hope but to blow themselves up."
One can only assume that recent events have shown Straw and his colleagues in the New Labour liberal establishment the fallacy of this line of argument. As slain with the scores of innocent victims last week was the myth that sustained such perverse beliefs. For no one can attribute the emergence of British suicide bombers to the 'hopelessness' of life in London or Derby and the attacks on Saudi Arabia and Morocco were clearly not the result of 'despair.'
No, the spate of attacks made clearer than ever that Islamist terrorists are driven, not by 'depression,' but by fanatical hatred and religious zealotry harnessed to a political cause. Whether the target is a bar in Tel Aviv or a club in Casablanca, 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 Hizbullah'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."
In reality, the use of suicide terrorism in the Middle East has been 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 has stated, "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." Indeed, he even believed that if Iraq could assemble "an army of would-be martyrs" armed with "tens of thousands of explosive belts," the American-Zionist Satan could be repulsed.
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 have been at pains to deny that their members are suicidal in the pathological 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 instill 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 last December, 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 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 their horrible crimes but their hope of achieving this ultimate goal.
Views expressed by the author do not
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