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Why "Suicide" Bombing?
By Ayesha Ahmad
30/08/2001
Another catchphrase has entered the realm of Western discourse on Middle Eastern affairs: "suicide bombing".
Both are ugly words when taken by themselves, but coupled with the images that are associated with them almost daily - destroyed buildings, flesh, blood, faces twisted in shock and grief, and angry Palestinian men brandishing guns and shouting about the greatness of God - these words now form an indelible symbol for what the West has always said about Arabs and Muslims.
Joining other terms such as "terrorist", "militant" and "fundamentalist", "suicide bombers" inevitably refers to young Muslim Palestinian zealots who are willing to die if they can take a few Israelis down with them.
And as the death toll mounts each day in Israel and the Occupied Territories, "experts" and journalists alike have begun to try to analyze this new tragic "phenomenon". It is in this territory that the stereotypes again break down the dialogue, and that ignorance and prejudice again disassemble human understanding.
The notorious arguments of "experts" like Daniel Pipes or Steven Emerson are not even needed to produce the kinds of "specials" on suicide bombing that have emerged this summer.
For example, a USA TODAY article on July 5th explored "the secret world of suicide bombers", claiming in no uncertain terms that "promises of financial stability for their families, eternal martyrdom and unlimited sex in the afterlife" are what drive "dozens of militant Palestinians … [to] aspire to blow themselves up."
The question of the martyr's reward of "unlimited sex with 72 virgins in heaven" was the first raised after a panel discussion on suicide bombing held Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Khalid Turaani, executive director of American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ), which sponsored the discussion, said that such ignorant allegations about Islam only serve as "an attempt to trivialize the Palestinian struggle for independence," - bringing the discussion back around to the real issue at hand.
The need to understand the motivation behind suicide bombings filled the discussion room at the National Press Club, which was attended by newsmakers and scholars alike.
Turaani explained that in Palestinian society, as in most Arab and Muslim societies, suicide is not, and has never been, a noble goal or a viable "way out" of a bad situation, since it is forbidden in Islam. "It's not a society where people get upset and kill themselves," he said.
But, the 52 years of illegal occupation and oppression that Palestinians have endured have left them at the end of a very frayed tether, he said. And the act of strapping on an explosive-laden shirt and stepping into a marketplace is not an act of self-destruction - "In the mind of the suicide bomber," Turaani said, "it is an act of defying and resisting Israeli occupation."
Panel speaker Joshua Ruebner, Executive Director of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, explored his understanding of a bomber's mindset by relaying his experience of waking up to the sound of a bombing in Jerusalem in February 1996, in which 26 people died.
"What despair must have this person felt to take his life in such a manner?" he asked, drawing comparisons between the "open roads" he saw at the time for his own post-college future and the endless closures that his "Palestinian counterpart" must have seen before him.
Ruebner, who was born and raised in Israel, emphasized that trying to understand suicide bombing in terms of anything other than its "human dimension" is to completely misunderstand it.
While unequivocally condemning the targeting of innocent civilians by such attacks, he wondered, "What would I have done if I were a Palestinian teenager in the same situation as my counterpart?
"Would I succumb to the temptation to fight fire with fire?… I don't know," he said.
The "situation" of Ruebner's "counterpart" lay at the heart of the panel's discussion. "Israelis must wipe the sleep from their eyes which blinds them to the cause-and-effect relationship" between Israel's occupation policies and the suicide bombings, Ruebner said.
The panel's other speaker, Abdelwahab El-Messiri, Professor Emeritus at Ain Shams University in Cairo, approached the issue of the Palestinian situation from a historical perspective.
"Imagine you are a Palestinian peasant sitting… someone comes and tells you, you have to leave your field because Hitler killed Jews up there," El-Messiri said.
The act of dispossession was followed by the parceling of Palestinian territory, the incursion of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, the economic subjugation of people living in Palestinian territory and the ongoing brutal discrimination against Palestinians as second-class citizens, with "identity cards" and marked vehicle license plates manifesting a system of racial oppression not unlike South African apartheid.
It is this history, he said, that perpetuated the anger Palestinians express today, fighting with whatever weapons they have - guns, homemade explosives - against the weapons that Israel has - tanks, missiles, F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships.
It is also what "makes a very good breeding ground for people who will commit suicide bombings," Turaani said.
The notion that brutally discriminatory economic and social policies against a people can propagate violence among its youth is not limited to Palestinian boys in the West Bank and Gaza.
Ironically, arguments for slavery reparations - which, along with the concept of Zionism as racism, are a major thorn in Washington's side regarding the upcoming World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa - pose an intriguing connection with the issues raised by Turaani, Ruebner and El-Messiri.
As one of the most vocal proponents of the reparations idea, Harvard-trained lawyer Randall Robinson has argued that as the legacy of slavery and post-slavery racial oppression left the African-American community impoverished - at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum - this legacy is responsible for the results of that poverty, including the high percentage of young black males who are in jail for violent crimes.
On the official companion website for his book, The Debt: What America Owes
Blacks, Robinson includes arguments that support those he uses in his book.
An excerpt from an essay by an Ohio State University law professor says, "Systematic and government-sanctioned economic and racial oppression since the abolition of slavery impeded and interfered with the
self-determination of African Americans and excluded them from sharing in the growth and prosperity of the
nation" (Author's emphasis).
Now, just replace "abolition of slavery" with "creation of the state of Israel," and replace "African Americans" with "Palestinians."
Proponents of slavery reparations argue that comprehensive government efforts towards uplifting the socio-economic situation of American blacks, as a compensation for the past crimes of slavery and prejudicial laws, will bring so many out of the cycle of poverty and violence that they have been born into.
But it is not even compensation that Palestinians are seeking - only their internationally-affirmed right to self-determined statehood and a just peace, free of constant oppression - and in the face of the world's inability to uplift
them, they have taken to arms, also their internationally-recognized right.
And, El-Messiri said, "Arafat cannot stop the Intifada [uprising], cannot stop the suicide bombings, until he is given some kind of agreement that will give the Palestinians their basic rights."
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres himself said, just before the August 9th Jerusalem bombing, "There are three million Palestinians who have lived under restrictions for 10 months, and we must understand this is a key problem which could explode in our face."
Palestinians will never stop pressing for their rights, but the despair that leads them to see suicide bombings as the only way to resist cannot be lifted without the offer of a just peace.
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