I've taken some excerpts from a book published in 2005 and posted them below. It includes some quotes from some Palestinian terrorists and would-be terrorists. Keep in mind that this book was written long before what has been taking place over the past couple of months and the years leading up to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. It would be safe to say that the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza today is at least tenfold what it was at the time this book was written. There is zero doubt that a new generation of terrorists will emerge as a result of this current conflict, and their numbers will be huge. They will not only be a threat to Israel and to Jews around the world; they will also be a threat to those countries that support Israel and the citizens of those countries.
Root Causes of Terrorism
Myths, reality and ways forward
(2005)
...religious indoctrination is no longer central to the preparation of the bombers – especially for secular groups such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But the iron fist of Ariel Sharon – the incursions into West Bank towns and refugee camps by Israeli armour and helicopter gunships, the mass arrests and lengthy curfews – has only increased the determination of those who would embrace martyrdom. In fact, it has no longer become a far-fetched conclusion that Sharon, by virtue of his reckless assault on Palestinians, has created a societal factory of suicide bombers, Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ not only among Muslims, but also among Palestinian Christians, hitherto unaccustomed to consider resorting to such measures.
Many of the interviewees reported growing up or living in a repressed or limited socioeconomic status. Their ability to work was regulated, the ability to travel freely was severely restricted and there was a general impression that they were denied the opportunity to advance economically. There was a common theme of having been ‘unjustly evicted’ from their land, of being relegated to refugee status or living in refugee camps in a land that was once considered theirs. Many of the interviewees expressed an almost fatalistic view of the Palestinian–Israeli relationship and a sense of despair or bleakness about the future under Israeli rule. Few of the interviewees were able to identify personal goals that were separate from those of the organization to which they belonged.
The fact is unmistakable and the message comes over loud and clear: a deep sense of injustice beyond the stage of profound frustration and despair stands at the heart of the issue. The Palestinian drive for freedom has been hampered by Israeli occupation atrocities.
Almost every Palestinian young man has suffered severe hardship at the hands of the Israeli occupation, such as arrest, beatings, injury and deportation. ‘Every Palestinian, without exception, has felt the suffocating strangle of Israeli military control on Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ their life'.
Arin Ahmed, a would-be bomber, during her conversation with the Israeli former minister of defence, Ben-Eliezer, unequivocally states that her motive for considering a ‘body attack’ on Israelis was not military or religious in nature. Rather, it was exclusively personal: ‘I was in distress. I was depressed … You [Israelis] killed my friend. We were friends for a year and a half’
Most experts feel that there is a common denominator among ‘suicide bombers’, that is the lack of a horizon, a lack of hope, that they are people who had lost faith in life. ‘Certainly, there is misery. Certainly, there is frustration. Certainly, they feel hopelessness’. This already bad situation for Palestinians is usually exacerbated by Israeli army military operations that ‘become a hothouse that produces more and more new suicide bombers’. Such operations ‘kindle the frustration, hatred and despair and are the incubator for the terror to come’.
Iyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist who heads the Gaza Community Mental Health Project, and who studied the bombers, and the would-be bombers who crossed his path, concludes that the motive behind ‘suicide bombing’ is rooted in trauma: injury to a father or brother in the First Intifada, or the death of a friend or even a distant relation in the present upheavals. To clarify this, he states that ‘in every case of suicide bombing, there is a personal tragedy or a trauma’. More specifically, ‘the people doing the suicide bombing today are the children of the First Intifada and they have witnessed or suffered personal trauma in one form or another that is humiliating’
Sarraj succinctly sums up the psychological dynamics behind ‘body bombings’ as follows:
The Palestinians have been driven to a state of hopelessness and despair, the kind of despair that comes from a situation that keeps getting worse, a despair where living becomes no different from dying. Desperation is a very powerful force – it is not only negative, but it can propel people to actions or solutions that would have previously been unthinkable. […] The rapid Israeli military deployment and its immediate shoot-to-kill policy have deepened the sense of victimization, helplessness and exposure of the Palestinian masses. […] Suicide bombing is an act of ultimate despair, a horrific reaction to extremely inhuman conditions in a seriously damaged environment of hopelessness. Suicide bombing is the ultimate cry for help.
For Shafiq Masalha, a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities, who conducted research on the dreams of Palestinian children between the ages of 10 and 11, there is an abnormally high percentage, 15 per cent, who dream of becoming martyrs, which indicates ‘that … life is very difficult, to the point that children are starting to think of death’, and ‘that a certain image has been drawn in people’s minds that the martyr will enjoy a wonderful life in heaven’.
Istish-hadiyyin (‘suicide bombers’) are by and large motivated by sights of hurt they have witnessed. Therefore, most of them are moved to act by their sweeping desire to take revenge. The continuation of Israeli brutalities serves as a fierce provocation for many Palestinian youngsters to expend their life of hopelessness and despair for the sake of their society. Most of the Istish-hadiyyin tend to be young, aged 18–27, unemployed, poor and witnesses of torture and/or death at the hands of Israeli soldiers. As the will of the shaheed, Hisham Ismail Abd-El Rahman Hamed (who blew himself up in November 1994, killing three Israeli soldiers and wounding two Israelis) shows, the Palestinian resistance and ‘suicide bombing’ feeling of hurt is always present.
‘Dear family and friends! I write this will with tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart. I want to tell you that I am leaving … because … this… is by all means more important than staying alive on this earth’.
The will of another shaheed, Salah Abed El Hamid Shaker, who blew himself up with another shaheed at Beit Lid on January 1995, killing 18 Israelis and wounding 36, is even more illustrative:
‘I am going to take revenge upon the … enemies of humanity’.
Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University has depicted ‘that intense struggles produce several types of people with the potential willingness to sacrifice themselves for a cause’. An attacker might be concerned with ‘imitating the glorious acts of others, responding to a perception of enormous humiliation and distress, [and with] avenging the murder of comrades and relatives’.
The story of Ayat Al-Akhrass is particularly poignant. A young 18-year-old girl from Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem blew herself up on 29 March 2002, killing two and injuring 28 Israelis in the process. Ayat did not seem to suffer personal disturbances from the brutally harsh conditions of life in the refugee camp. Spectacularly beautiful, she was top in her class and engaged to be married. But the cruel living conditions in her family’s one-room home in the camp and the ongoing sights of Palestinians, especially children, brutalized by the Israeli army triggered her desire to take revenge and to send a deep outcry to the inept Arab army generals, as her will demonstrates:
‘Do view my martyrdom as an attempt to embarrass you and to break the silence that engulfs you while our people are being slaughtered’.
Indeed, her action was a testimony to how some young Palestinians barely beginning their lives react to conditions and circumstances around them. Ayat represents a great loss to Palestinian society, to no less an extent that she did to the lives she lost with her. She was as bright as a young lady of her age might like to be. She left home on a Friday morning to go to school for makeup classes lost because of the curfews. Not even her would-be husband could tell. She knew exactly what she was doing: As the story goes, she warned some Palestinian women at the site of her bombing to leave immediately so that they would not be hurt. Her story resonated loudly and widely in the Arab world. Desperation is certainly to blame, not personal though, but national and political.
Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah views the rewards a shaheed seeks in psycho-religious terms. Explaining how one considers becoming a shaheed, Nasrallah says: "Imagine you are in a sauna. It is very hot but you know that in the next room there is air conditioning, an armchair, classical music and a cocktail. So you pass easily into the next room. That is how I would explain the mind of the martyr to a Westerner."
Perceived injustice has long been recognized a central factor in understanding violence generally and terrorism specifically, dating back to some of the earliest writings. In the mid-1970s, Hacker concluded that “remediable injustice is the basic motivation for terrorism”. A desire for revenge or vengeance is a common response to redress or remediate a wrong of injustice inflicted on another. It is not difficult to imagine that “one of the strongest motivations behind terrorism is vengeance, particularly the desire to avenge not oneself but others. Vengeance can be specific or diffuse, but it is an obsessive drive that is a powerful motive for violence toward others, especially
Psychology of Terrorism people thought to be responsible for injustices”
Terrorist groups can endure military strikes, ‘targeted assassinations’ and other harsh measures not because the people and resources lost are not important, but because the violence works to increase the motivation of more members than it decreases, and works to attract more support and sympathy to the group than it frightens away.
When Israel kills Hamas members and imposes other sanctions on Palestinian communities, they increase the sense of perceived injustice, particularly considering the high loss of innocent life, driving more recruits into extremist groups and facilitating increased sympathy and support for these groups not only within the West Bank and Gaza, but further afield among the international community. As a result, Israel may win skirmish after skirmish in these terms but still find itself unable to establish lasting peace and stability until other counter-terrorism policies are given greater priority and prominence.
Ultimately, the use of aggressive measures to combat terrorism can be both justifiable and legal. Frequently, they also successfully fulfil a number of important (though usually short-term) objectives. However, if past experience is anything to go by, defeating or diminishing the threat of terrorism in the long-term is not something that such measures are proficient at doing.
bible.usccb.org
