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October 13th, 1997
;)
The Suicide Bomber
by LOUIS RENE
BERES
THE "SUICIDE BOMBER" is a contradiction in terms. Animated by the
voverriding wish to conquer personal death -- to live forever amidst
seventy-two virgins and rivers of honey -- this homicidal terrorist
sees absolutely nothing suicidal about his willful murder of
defenseless Israeli civilians. For him, the "death" that he plans so
meticulously to suffer is merely a momentary inconvenience on his
fiery propulsion into heaven, a markedly temporary annoyance on his
bloodsoaked road to immortality.
What can we learn from this paradox, from a
"suicide" that does not intend to end the bomber's life, but rather
to extend it? For Israel, which now struggles against Palestinian
terrorism (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PLO, it makes no difference) with
nary a hint of real understanding, the essential lesson is this:
Recognize that your adversary is not heroic and fearless, but
exactly the opposite. Understand that he is a terrorizing and
terrible coward, one so utterly immobilized by existential anxieties
of nonbeing that he will do anything -- including the killing of
other people's infants and children -- to prevent his own death.
Blowing himself up with explosives to ensure his personal survival,
he wants all the world to believe that he has embarked upon suicidal
operations ("military operations," in the words of Arafat ally and
Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Rantisi) when, in reality, the prospect of
real self-sacrifice is altogether beyond his comprehension. were he
to believe even for a moment that his "suicide" were really an exit
from all life this Arab terrorist would resist, frantically and
completely, every invitation to "martyrdom."
The "suicide bomber" is fully convinced that
in destroying Jews he has prevented his own death. Killing Jews
offers him an unparalleled feeling of relief, of the very greatest
power any human being can enjoy, of immunity from personal
mortality. The insufferable death fear of his ego is lessened by the
sacrifice of the infidel Jew; it is through the bombing of Jewish
women and children that he buys himself free from the penalty of
ever being killed. What is more, he knows beyond a shadow of doubt
that after executing this sacrifice literally millions of other
Muslims will proudly raise their heads over the newest field of
Jewish corpses, smile broadly into the sun, and reaffirm G-d's
greatness to all the world.
For Israel there is little point to deterring
would-be suicide bombers from terrorist operations with threats of
death -- threats which are received not only without apprehension,
but, expectedly, with a delirious joy and collective ecstasy. No, to
deter the "suicide bomber," Israel must now offer the prospective
murderer the compelling threat of authentic suicide, of the
knowledge that his explosion of Jewish bodies will bring not a
prompt entry into paradise but only an irreversible slide into the
eternal darkness, into oblivion, into death.
There is another idea that Israel must
quickly understand. The young Palestinian male who seeks the
"martyrdom" of a "suicide bomber" is presently at a loss for any
alternative validation of his maleness and his personhood. Now
dependent altogether upon community esteem, he is unable to do
anything else that could conceivably bring to him the same measure
of deference, nay reverence, that so reliably accompanies what he so
erroneously calls "suicide."
As a crowd-centered being, the Islamic
suicide bomber is fully unfolded as a soldier of G-d and The Prophet
only by dispensing with independent thought. Made complete through
the sacrifice of the despised other -- of the Jew whose continued
existence challenges his own longing for eternal life -- he comes
truly to life only through the deliverance of death. To create
Palestine from the dismembered body of the Jewish State, a body
consciously attritted and tormented by a so-called "Peace Process,"
the "suicide bomber's" homicides must always masquerade as
suicide.
What is Israel to do? Violence and the sacred
are inseparable, but Israel, it seems, must now think in terms of
desacrilizing the "suicide- bomber," of convincing this would-be
shatterer of innocents that G-d's promise will not follow his
explosive logic and that his bombs will lead him not to paradise but
to the grave. Can this desacrilization be accomplished by Israeli
politicians? Of course not! It will have to originate among Islamic
holy men themselves; yet, they are hardly motivated in this
direction.
Should Israel target and kill terrorist
leaders? For what purpose? The terrorist threat now faced by Israel
resembles the mythic Hydra, a monster of many heads which was
difficult to kill because every time one head was struck, by
Hercules, two new ones arose. No, there are far too many terrorists
to kill. For Israel, effective counterterrorism must lie in very
different directions.
There is only one way to cope more or less
successfully with the "suicide bomber." He can never be convinced
that destroying Jews is not a purposeful and amply rewarded
sacrifice to G-d. Nor can he ever be convinced that greater public
esteem than that accorded to a "suicide bomber" is granted for any
other form of human activity. As for assassination of terrorists, to
be really effective it would have to become genocidal.
What is the correct strategy for Israel? "O
my soul," says the poet Pindar, "do not aspire to immortal life, but
exhaust the limits of the possible." Unable to turn the "suicide
bomber" from his all consuming aspiration to cheat death by killing
and from his impatience with possibility, Israel now has little
choice but to do everything operationally possible to reduce
terrorist opportunity to murder Israelis. In the end, this means
recognizing an incontestable Israeli imperative to abrogate the Oslo
Accords, those authentically suicidal (for Israel) agreements which
inflame the "suicide bomber" and sustain his hope for a radiant
future that rewards doubly. Granting life everlasting to the killer
while simultaneously bringing death to the hated Jew, this
altogether plausible future contains a catastrophic war distilled
from the bomber's paradoxical vision of suicide. Drowning the
ceremony of innocence once and for all, this future wherein
terrorist death fears are muted by murder must not be allowed to
happen.
LOUIS RENE BERES is Professor of Political Science
and International Law at Purdue University and a member of
B'tzedek's Editorial Board..
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