As one reviewer so eloquently pointed out, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg show a complete disregard for political and social factors in their extremely superficial and biased analysis of suicide terrorism. In order to describe the true motives behind suicide attacks, one must look into the root causes of suicide terrorism. Contrary to popular belief, a typical suicide bomber is not a religious zealot seeking to destroy the West because he abhors our liberal values. In point of fact, most suicide bombers are secular individuals, as corroborated by the fact that the group responsible for most suicide attacks in the world the Tamil Tigers are adamantly opposed to religion. Admittedly, religion is often used as a tool to recruit new suicide bombers by promising them eternal life in paradise. Nonetheless, religion is by no means a primary motive behind suicide terrorism. While its importance should not be downplayed or denied, it only plays a secondary role.
Robert Pape has in my opinion conducted the most meticulous and comprehensive study of suicide terrorism. What makes Pape's study so superior to every other book on suicide terrorism is that it refuses to make simplistic and unsubstantiated claims. It delves deep into the root causes of suicide terrorism and is not afraid to ask the dangerous questions. Pape's study demonstrates without a doubt that most suicide bombers are driven primarily by political motives. According to Pape, the principal motive of suicide bombers is to obliterate the presence of foreign powers from the areas that suicide bombers consider to be their homelands. Therefore, simply labeling a Palestinian suicide bomber as a religious fanatic driven solely by religious motives is a gross overgeneralization and oversimplification. Most Palestinian suicide bombers have divulged that their primary motive is to fight the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and to relieve the suffering of their people. They believe that the only way to fight a much more powerful adversary is to resort to suicide missions. In the view of the Palestinian suicide bombers all targets are legitimate since they are at war with Israel. They also believe that they have the right to retaliate against the Israeli killing of the Palestinian children and women which Israel by the way conveniently labels as the "collateral damage".
Understanding suicide terrorism does not suggest in any way that it is morally justifiable. But if we really wish to understand its root causes then we must tell the truth and refrain from making sensationalistic albeit incorrect and misleading conclusions. People who live under the Israeli occupation are subjected daily to humiliation and derogatory comments. They live in abject poverty where desperation, despair and hopelessness are omnipresent. It is out of these gruesome conditions that suicide terrorism emerges. Imagine being humiliated and mistreated every day in your own country by an extremely powerful bully. What would you do?
All these factors are somehow overlooked or at best downplayed in this book. Subsequently, the conclusions are erroneous, inaccurate and biased. I recommend Robert Pape's brilliant book Dying to Win The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism and John Esposito's Unholy War Terror in the Name of Islam. In addition to these books, I recommend an extremely powerful and disturbing movie Paradise Now.
This book is one of the most obnoxious partisan screeds I have come across in a long history of reading about this region. The authors conveniently ignore the entire political context, that of Isreal's belligerent military occupation of Palestinian territories, which is what the people they have written about are fighting against. Such decontextualized, depoliticizing representations lead readers to interpret the subjects of this book as simply deranged individuals, rather than politically motivated people who are shaped by and reacting to their history and social context. In addition, the authors either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent the range of complex meanings associated with martyrdom in Palestinian society, which in fact go well beyond the issue of suicide bombers. Drawing on the most cliched set of Orientalist caricatures, the authors portray their subjects as alternately murderous, backwards, bizarrely exotic, sadistic, or simply crazy. This is not a book for anyone who actually wants to learn about the social, political and religious situation in Palestine and their relationship to martyrdom and suicide bombers.
