Courtesy of Haim,
Terrorism as Sacrifice - The Anthropology of Palestinian "Suicide" Bombing
02 July 2003
For Palestinian terrorists, murderous violence against Jews — all Jews — is the heart and secret soul of sacredness. More precisely, such violence is an especially pleasing expression of religious sacrifice, a feverishly ritualistic slaughter of innocents designed to elicit divine favor. Contrary to conventional wisdom on the subject, Arab suicide bombers care little for land or for better living conditions or for Palestinian statehood. What really matters to them is personal recognition and personal immortality.
To be sure, Palestinian hatred of Jews is deep and far-reaching. But if the despised Jew did not exist, Arab terrorists would have to invent him. For these killers, the explosive sacrifice of Jewish men, women and children in buses, playgrounds and nursery schools offers not "merely" the promise of life everlasting, it also serves to protect the Palestinian community from its own violence. When defenseless Jews are maimed and burned by Islamic "martyrs," all elements of dissension within the Palestinian community are drawn systematically to the persons of the sacrifical victims.
Terrorist sacrifice eliminates internal disharmony. Recognizing this, Arab leaders encourage and incite "martyrdom." The individual "suicide" bomber, of course, acts — as we have just seen — for other more private reasons, but his handlers certainly have very different motives.
In all religious sacrifice, the victims must bear a certain basic resemblance to the sacrificers; otherwise the underlying impulse to violence would be unsatisfied. But this resemblance must never be carried too far, lest it diminish the sacrificer's ardor. Understood in terms of Palestinian "suicide" bombing terrorism against Jews, this means acknowledging that the intended victims are indeed human, but only barely.
As sacrifical victims of terrorism, Jews are distinguished by the Palestinian murderers from themselves in many ways, but even these announced differences can never overshadow the likely prospect of Jewish vengeance. Regrettably, the fact that these particular victims may not be sacrificed without risk of reprisal does not seriously deter further terror; rather, it simply leads to a continuing rationale for more and more murderous assaults and for more and more bloodied victims.
This brings us to the "Road Map," the latest expression of a long-failing Peace Process. For those Palestinian sacrificers who would maintain their uniquely indecent war against Jewish civilians in spite of now codified expectations to the contrary, terrorism will remain the preferred means to quell violence within their own community. Although this function of sacrificial rites is widely known in the anthropology literature, it is still unrecognized in the State of Israel and in the United States — the states most endangered by Arab/Islamic terror-violence.
In Euripides' Medea, the principle of human substitution of one victim for another appears most starkly and horribly. Because the true object of Medea's hatred — her faithless husband Jason — is out of her reach, she substitutes her own children. Moreover, Medea prepares the death of her children exactly like a priest preparing for sacrifice. What is most important, Medea's sacrifice reveals the following overriding truth about violence, a truth that should be at the very top of the list for Israeli officials concerned about Arab terror: Violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding areas. The role of sacrificial Islamic terror is nothing less than to stem this rising tide and to redirect murderous fear into "proper" channels.
How do we know that Palestinian terrorists actually think of their own violence against Israelis in this way? One answer is that they say so, day after day after day. There is no ambiguity in the Friday sermons; or on the PA (Palestine Authority), Hamas and Islamic Jihad websites. Here it is made absolutely clear that murdering Jews is a compelling and non-cancellable religious obligation. Such murder is assuredly nothing so trivial as a political or military tactic. On the contrary, for those Palestinians who would wield "suicide" bombing against Israel, violence and the sacred are inseparable. For them, the correctness of terror/violence even depends upon its being performed in a proper spirit of "submission."
It is important to understand that for Palestinian terrorists, sacrificial violence against Israel has two categories of victims. One category, of course, is the "vile, infidel Jew." The other is the "glorious martyr" who kills the despised Jew (it is always the "Jew," never the Israeli) and who earns eternal glory by "dying for the sake of Allah." This "martyr" need not fear personal death in sacrificing himself as a suicide. On the contrary, by choosing to "die" in this way he actually buys himself free, forever, from the penalty of dying. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah, as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
"Strive for death, and you will receive life," believes the Palestinian terrorist who would sacrifice himself as well as the hated "Jew plunderer." Significantly, a series of articles on Palestinian "martyrs" (the Shuhada) in al-Istiqlal implicitly acknowledges a basic human sameness, but also presumes a substantial difference from the Jews, whom they allege fear death and seek life at all costs. In essence, this is an unfounded and most ironic polarity, as the main rationale of the "suicidal" Islamic terrorist is to avoid death at all costs. For this "martyr," what is always absolutely crucial is to obtain a "seat in Paradise" and to be saved "from the torture of the grave."
In practice, Israeli officials who would understand Arab terror against Israel as a form of sacrificial religious worship might now seek ways to disabuse intended "martyrs" of their particular brand of faith in immortality. But, let us be candid, this would likely be far beyond the scope of operational possibility. Palestinian violence takes shelter in religion, but, reciprocally, religion also allows Palestinian terrorists to combine ecstatic bloodletting with internal harmony.
As Israel continues to mistakenly project its own Western, rational, essentially American model upon Palestinian terrorist thinking, recent "martyr" Samy Rahim's words speak volumes about the true nature of the Arab/Islamic terrorist adversary: "Every day on which the sun rises and no Jew is killed, nor any martyr has died, will be a day for which we will be punished by Allah." This punishment will arise because both obligatory aspects of sacrificial terror will have been neglected: The sacrifice of the Jew and the sacrifice of the murderer. The two-sided nature of terror/sacrifice is also codified in the Charter of Hamas, which states clearly: "...the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise...."I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill."
In the prevailing Arab/Islamic view, victory for the Palestinian people will come only when both the despised Jews and the Arab "martyrs" suffer death. But while death for the Jews will be final and unheroic, a confirmation of intrinsic Jewish limitations and unworthiness, death for the Palestinians will be only a temporary inconvenience on the way to eternal life. It is only by killing Jews and subsequently being killed by them that true freedom from death can be realized.
Yasir Arafat's appointed clergy, preaching recently on the Temple Mount, spoke as follows: "Palestinians spearhead Allah's war against the Jews. The dead shall not rise until the Palestinians shall kill all the Jews....All agreements with Israel are provisional." The Palestinian solution for "the Jews" is a Final Solution. Only as Israel begins to understand that this solution is rooted in the Islamic concept of sacrifice can it truly learn to survive.
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Louis Rene Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971), Professor, Department of Political Science, Purdue University, |
