Hi all; Time Magazine publishes a rather sympathetic look at suicide bombers:
Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage
Amanda Ripley, Time, April 15, 2002
Among Palestinians, dying to kill has become a noble calling. Here's how the practice went from extreme to mainstream.
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The Palestinian suicide bomber has evolved since Nabulsi made his debut in the role. Today he is deadlier and requires less coercion. He used to be easy to describe: male, 17 to 22 years of age, unmarried, unformed, facing a bleak future, fanatically religious and thus susceptible to Islam's promise of a martyr's place in paradise, complete with the affections of heaven's black-eyed virgins. Today's bomber no longer fits the profile.
Today he is Izzadin Masri, the 23-year-old son of a prosperous restaurant owner, who killed himself and 15 people at a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria last August. He is Daoud Abu Sway, 47, a father of eight not known to be unusually political or religious, who detonated a bomb outside a luxury hotel in Jerusalem in December, killing himself and injuring two others. He is even a she. Ayat Akhras, 18, was a straight-A student, just months away from graduation and then marriage. On March 29, she killed herself and two others outside a Jerusalem supermarket. Volunteers such as these are coming forward faster than militant leaders can strap an explosive belt around their waist and send them off to kill and die.
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Once upon a time, in the years immediately following that first bombing in 1993, it was a challenge to recruit suicide bombers. ...
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Until recently most Palestinians believed they had alternatives to the kind of militancy practiced by Hamas. ...
... Last December the mainstream Fatah movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the nationalist group that forms the backbone of the Palestine Liberation Organization, entered the suicide-bombing business. Since then, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Fatah offshoot, has taken part in at least 10 such attacks, some of them in collaboration with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The Brigades activists are generally not religious fanatics. ...
... The bombmakers combine acetone and phosphate with water in a large bowl and put the mixture out to dry on roofs or balconies. Then they use a coffee grinder to break it down into powder. At this point, the material is packed into small bags, or preferably pipes, which break apart and become shrapnel in a blast. ...
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The Middle East did not invent the suicide attack. In modern times the most notorious practitioners were the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II. Today the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, who are fighting their government for a separate Tamil state, are the unmatched leaders in the field. They have launched some 200 suicide attacks that have killed hundreds. ...
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But the Palestinian practice is alarming for its sheer momentum. Says Bruce Hoffman, terrorism specialist at the Rand Corp.: "Groups there succeeded in what terrorist organizations have rarely been able to do, and that's transform their campaigns into almost mass movements, not dependent on a hard-core cadre of fighters but rather with people from the population readily stepping forward to replenish the terrorist ranks." In the Middle East the notion of the suicide bomber has a particularly toxic appeal. Other regions struggle with warfare and rage, but Islam offers potent rationales and rewards for "martyrdom." In Islam martyrdom washes away all past sins and guarantees the bomber places for 70 relatives in heaven.
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To Palestinians, perhaps the most persuasive defense of suicide bombings today is that they are working. If the goal is to empower the powerless and shake the foundation of Israeli society, the bombings have proved highly effective. Presumably the Palestinians would be happy to fight the Israelis conventionally, army against army, but they have no real military. ...
... Samir Rantissi, a coordinator of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition, condemns attacks on civilians but believes they result from escalating frustration. "For 35 years, Palestinians have tried every, every, every means to deal with this intolerable occupation," he says. "We tried to coexist with it. It didn't work. We tried demonstrating against it. It didn't work. We tried secret negotiating channels that led to Oslo and assumed it would lead to a Palestinian state. It didn't work."
There is disagreement over how to stanch suicide bombings: Should one remove the infrastructure that supports them or give the volunteers more reasons for living than for dying? For now, Israel is targeting the supply side of the attacks--the militant leaders and weapons makers who organize the missions. But as the pool of suicide bombers grows, the need for infrastructure diminishes. Recruiters are not much needed when volunteers are abundant. And bomb builders have proved to be replaceable. For example, Israeli forces managed to assassinate a Hamas master bombmaker on Jan. 22. The disruption led to a slight dip in attacks. But the organization's bombmaking expertise bounced back within a couple of months, Israeli security officials concede. "These operations cannot, absolutely cannot, be stopped," says Marzouk. "Nothing, neither policies nor military barricades, can prevent a person who chooses to be a martyr from carrying out his action." That has certainly been the experience with crackdowns by the Israelis.
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time.com
-- Carl
P.S. Nadine, this is an example of the American public's slow turning away from sympathy for Israel and towards sympathy for the Palestinians. The Palestinians are succeeding. When the public's opinion has been tilted towards "neutral", US support for the Israeli war machine will cease and Israel will be forced to negotiate with their Arab brothers from a position of equality instead of domination. It's not going to be nearly as bad as you say. Just like with South Africa, the peace will be a surprise.
Also see: The theory that the Israeli government is the best or even the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East lost a good deal of credibility over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon willfully defied the call of President Bush for withdrawal of Israeli defense forces from the Palestinian Authority "without delay." #reply-17309666
The problem with Israel as a US ally, is that Israel is a liability to US foreign policy, provides zero military advantage to the US, the alliance reduces US domestic safety, and Israel is in such extreme peril (as a government) that she can provide no assistance to anyone, even if she wanted to. |
