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Suicide bombing: Terror without borders Since its creation
as a state by the UN in 1948, Israel has had to struggle for acceptance
and legitimacy in the Arab world. For nearly twenty years, many
members of the Arab world refused to recognize the state or call
it by its name. Indeed up to the present time, many Israelis are
still caught in the story of their own uniqueness and the fact that
they are, historically, a persecuted people. They believe that they
are still vulnerable, surrounded by enemies, and that they need
a world-class defense structure to protect Israel from these enemies.
They invoked the Holocaust as license for Israel to keep West Bank,
East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip that they captured after the
1967 war. They now insist that the ancient Jewish State lies on
the territory of the present "Greater Israel." Although
many Jewish scholars still claim that it rests in the promised lands
of Judea and Samaria. They view every reference to the rights of
the Palestinians or the return of the occupied territories as raising
the specter Holocaust or the fomenting of anti-Semitism. Metamorphosis They are speaking,
no doubt, of the Israel before 1967. The post-1967 Israel has changed
in ways that make this traditional self-description preposterous.
Israel today is a military and colonial power. It uses force, torture,
and state-sponsored assassination to maintain the captured territories.
For over three decades Israel has used the settlement process to
keep its colonies: suppressing the local population, seizing land,
giving settlers superior legal status in the occupied territories
over the legitimate owners. These methods of suppression and repression
have brought bloodshed and destruction to new levels. Israeli hard
line tactics has increased the number of suicide bombers in the
Hamas, in Islamic Jihad, and in Arafat's Fatah. It has led to a
shift of their targets from the military to civilians in cafes,
pizzerias, malls, and buses. In retaliation Israeli forces kill
people who had not committed to the terror, using F-16s, tanks and
bulldozers to destroy Palestinian housing tenements, farms. According
to the Israeli information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories, the number of Israeli killed by Palestinians from September
29, 2000 to November 30, 2002, are 640. Of those, 440 are civilians,
82 of them are below the age of 18. 335 Israelis were killed in
Israel proper. About 27 foreigners were killed during this period.
During the same period about 1,597 Palestinians were killed by Israelis,
300 of them are minors. But beginning March 2002, there are no accurate
figures of Palestinians killed by Israeli troops, since the Israeli
military would permit no outside inspection team to enter those
areas. Though most
people condemn suicide bombing as a barbaric act, it is not a new
method of war albeit an effective one. In 1937-1938 Jewish terrorists
bombed Arab buses and markets in Haifa and Jaffa which killed dozens
of women and children, a tactic the Israeli's used with regularity
in the period preceding Israeli's War of Independence. On April
9, 1948 the Irgun of Menachem Begin deliberately massacred over
one hundred civilians in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. Retaliation Other internationally
known suicide bombers were the Japanese kamikaze, the Iranian basaji,
and Tamil Black Tigers of Sri Lanka. In India a woman suicide bomber
had killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. No doubt the 9/11 attacks
on World Trade Center and Pentagon were large-scale suicide bombings. In the Middle
East, suicide bombings had been effective means for driving away
foreign troops. According to Daniel Rubenstein, an authoritative
commentator on the Palestinians, suicide bombing was adapted by
the Palestinians after the October 8, 1990 incident when hundreds
of worshippers came out of the al-Aqsa mosque throwing stones at
the Israeli police and the Jewish worshippers praying at the Wailing
Wall nearby. The Israeli police retaliated by killing 18 Palestinians.
Hamas called for jihad but took no subsequent action. But some of
the Palestinians decided to seek revenge on their own. A certain
Omar abu Sirhan went out to kill three people in Jerusalem. When
arrested, he said that the Prophet appeared in his dream and ordered
him to avenge those who were killed in the al-Aqsa mosque. Hamas
declared him a hero and soon used the incident as an excuse to recruit
and organize human bombers. From the statements issued by Hamas
and Islamis Jihad, the suicide bomber is willing to die as an act
of ultimate devotion in a defensive holy war. Hamas leaders insist
that Israel, as a Jewish state, is an invasion of the domain of
Islam. Fighting Israel is part of defensive jihad, the suicide bombers
are just "freeing the land" from invaders. Professor Avishai
Margalit of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said that what the
Palestinian bombers have in common is that they are all Muslims.
This was what led Hamas to claim that suicide bombing is part of
their religious duty. This means that their struggle against Israel
has both religious and ideological elements. One is holy war or
jihad, which is against the oppressive occupation of Palestinian
land by Israel. The other, is martyrdom; the prophet considers those
who sacrificed themselves for the holy war as martyrs. In some cases,
the element of martyrdom appears stronger. For instance in the pre-recorded
statement of Mahmoud Ahmed Marmsh, who blew himself up in Netanya
near Tel Aviv: "I want
to avenge the blood of the Palestinians, especially the blood of
the women, of the elderly, and of the children, and in particularly
the blood of the baby girl Iman Hejjo, whose death shook me to the
core…" Desperation Relatives of the bombers claim that the bombers are driven by their own feelings of hopelessness and despair about the situation of the Palestinians. Professor Margalit is not convinced. "The despair in communities explains the support for the suicide bombers, but it does not explain each person's choice to commit suicide by means of a bomb." Professor Margalit believes that it is motivated by a combination of the desire for "spectacular revenge," political brainwashing, and the fact that families of shuhada (martyrs) receive substantial financial rewards from other Arab countries. Islamic law
prohibits suicide and the killing of innocents. This is why Muslims
do not call them suicide bombers but martyrs or shuhada. The Hamas justify
suicide bombing as an act of defense, their ultimate weapon to protect
Palestinians from slaughter by the Israelis. Hamas leaders insist:
"If we should not use it, we shall be back in the situation
of the first week of the Intifada when the Israelis killed us with
impunity." The Palestinians told Amnesty International their
reasons for targeting civilians: "They
are engaged in a war against an occupying power and that religion
and international law permit the use of any means in resistance
to occupation; that they are retaliating against Israel killing
of armed groups and Palestinians generally; that striking at civilians
is the only way they can make an impact upon a powerful adversary;
that Israelis generally or settlers are not civilians." Amnesty International
rejected these justifications. Amnesty considers both Israeli and
Palestinian violations of human rights so grave that many of them
"meet the definition of crimes against humanity under international
law." |
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