Study: Palestinian suicide bombers 'not mentally unstable'

TORONTO - In an extensive study of Palestinian suicide bombings, three University of Toronto researchers have concluded that the bombers were not psychologically unstable and were often motivated by personal vengeance, not religious zeal.

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Writing in the academic journal Social Forces, Brym noted, "The organizers of suicide attacks don't want to jeopardize their missions by recruiting unreliable people. It may be that some psychologically unstable people want to become suicide bombers, but insurgent organizations strongly prefer their cannons fixed."

He also found that the suicide bombers did not experience extraordinary high levels of economic deprivation.

Furthermore, in his study published in Contexts, Brym concluded that a majority of bombers, like Palestinian female lawyer, Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, 29, who killed 21 civilians in a 2003 bombing at Maxim restaurant in Haifa, were "motivated by the desire for revenge and retaliation."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/957356.html

And I think it CAN be a noble way to go, though it rarely is.

And on that, hows everyone down here doing? :)

Not much has changed since you were last here. Same script, different cast :)

I just dropped down here to be a wise ass last night. I have no urge to tackle this cage match anymore. :)

Hope you're doing well! :hi:

Not that I condone blowing oneself and others up at all, but the fact is that they are doing this for a reason; not because they're crazy but that they have a cause that they believe so fervently in that they want to die for it.

This is what pissed me off the most a few years ago about Fox News adopting the Israeli media ploy of changing the name from suicide bombers to homicide bombers. It was a subtle ploy to direct the public's attention solely to the act itself by naming the act after the victims, rather than the perpetrator. It sought to mask the very fact that there was an intent behind it and turn it into a simplistic killing.

It was a particularly Fox News ploy. The definition drives me potty because it doesn't make any sense. All bombers are homicidal, otherwise they wouldn't go around bombing. The fact that these bombers kill themselves in the process does not change that fact, but calling them "homicide bombers" instead of "suicide bombers" covers up the fact that they are so ultra-extreme that they are willing to kill themselves in the process.

In the Israeli Hebrew press these bombers are still called "mehablim mitabdim", i.e. suicide bombers. You won't find them called anything else. Blame Fox News not Israel.

on the people they murdered.

More honor to them. We American bourgeois are NOT and that is why the elite continue to rule us without fear.

While it may be honorable to die for your beliefs, it is far from honorable to take others with you, especially innocents. This article is not about Palestinians willing to die for their cause, it is about revenge and taking as many innocents as possible.

Desperation is something I can only dimly understand because I have never been in such a position with no real way out.

Many people are in dire need and seemingly beyond hope, they do not feel the need to express that desperation by blowing themselves and other innocents up in a bombing.

It talks about a desire for revenge and retaliation.

From the article:

"He also found that the suicide bombers did not experience extraordinary high levels of economic deprivation."

This article makes me think of the school shootings here in the United States. Folks wanting to take out their misguided desire for "revenge" against innocent people.

mere economics. I don't like the sort of sociopsychological reductionism implicit in this piece.

I do not see how killing innocent civilians as well as oneself could in any way be connected to aspiring for freedom and/or justice.

Maybe in the same way that rebel soldiers in Sierra Leone rape pre-teen girls in front of their parents in order to get some measure of revenge for the perceived injustices that they believe they have been the victims of.

In either case, the fact that the perpetrators of these horrific crimes are potentially considered to be of sound mind makes the crimes that much more despicable.

resorts to such actions but tragic situations lead to desperate remedies. And, of course, there are precedents less degrading than the ones you bring up. The Bishop of Auxerre who said, "Kill them all, the Lord will know his own!" (Of course, he didn't sacrifice himself but the principle is essentially the same.) Social and cultural purity demands sacrifice (sometimes of oneself also). Perhaps despicable actions arise from hideous predicaments. If we knew how to stop the cycles of violence, I am sure those of us of good will would leap to do so. I am just becoming more cynical about human nature.

do not mean that people are compelled to blow themselves and innocent people up.

There is no rationale for such behavior, except that it shows a complete lack of value for human life.

involved since I have never been under such duress that I would want to blow myself up and take some perceived enemies with me. I think the problem here is that a member of X group might decide that ALL members of Y group are enemies just because of their very proximity or just because of their very existence as they try to crowd X group into starvation and exile and existential insignificance. But, no, as I said, I don't understand what ultimately trips the trigger. We know the thought process to annihilate exists "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
or "After this war, Japanese will only be spoken in Hell." (just to name some good old American sentiments). But we here have not put much value on self-immolation I think because of the strictures against suicide in the western Christian tradition.

whether of sane people deeply frustrated by the way that their country or group has been treated, or or people with mental health problems aggravated by experiences of bullying. In both cases, frustration and desperation can lead to a desire for revenge. However, understanding is not the same thing as approval. Both the suicide bomber, and the school shooter who kills others and then himself, are harming innocent people *and they are not achieving any goal but revenge, and increasing fear among others*. Suicide bombings are immoral *and* generally counterproductive. Nonviolent campaigns are generally far more *effective* at everything but killing, which surely should *not* be one's goal!

Several thousand in Iraq so far.

While admiring the troops' courage and their readiness to sacrifice themselves for their country, I still think that this war is immoral. And so are most wars.

I think that progressives should be encouraging a move to non-violent solutions to political problems. One can honour the courage of those who sacrifice themselves for a cause, and still regard them as terribly misguided. There are certainly some cases where there is absolutely no choice but to go to war; but these are rare.

Wilfred Owen, a British poet-soldier in the First World War - who was eventually killed in that war-
wrote a poem about a soldier killed by gas, and concluded that if the reader could have seen the horrors of this death:

"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest,
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori"

(Latin for "It is sweet and proper to die for your country.")

I would never support the suicide bombings, or any form of pre-emptive war, or advocate violent revolution in America or Britain.

Channel Firing by Thomas Hardy. I said American bourgeois not ALL Americans are ready for the sacrifice of war. Our volunteer army is of course drawn from the most oppressed classes in US society. Violent revolution is outmoded but general strikes of the sort that ended British imperialism in India are still feasible.

got any real facts to back up that statement about the Army? Speaking purely for my father and brother, they came from a comfortable middle class background.

It may be an adequate career path for some now but traditionally it was the conscript peasantry officered by the aristocracy. This overview is not meant to be taken personally. The "middle class" is something of an historical oddity and may not continue much longer despite its misguided zeal to prop up a system of social, political and economic injustice. Pax vobiscum!

n summary, we found that, on average, 1999 recruits were more highly educated than the equiv alent general population, more rural and less urban in origin, and of similar income status. We did not find evidence of minority racial exploitation (by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). We did find evidence of a ?Southern military tradition? in that some states, notably in the South and West, provide a much higher proportion of enlisted troops by population.

The household income of recruits generally matches the income distribution of the American population. There are slightly higher proportions of recruits from the middle class and slightly lower proportions from low-income brackets. However, the proportion of high-income recruits rose to a disproportionately high level after the war on ter rorism began, as did the proportion of highly edu cated enlistees.


http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda05-08.cfm

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though i have learned that facts usually have no effect on those who use the terminology of the 60's

go into the military. They have no other option for raising themselves in life. Sad but true. I suppose it has always been that way. Not just now or in the 1960's. When there was a draft my social class got out and stayed out. Only one person from my college was killed and he was a volunteer. Even the officers I knew stayed clear of Nam. And what trust can you place in information from the Heritage Foundation?

There is no comparison between an American soldier and a suicide bomber, and I am sure many would be offended by this comparison.

Soldiers do kill people, but they do not go into a mission, certain of killing themselves and as many innocents as possible. Usually preservation of their own lives is paramount, which is clearly not true for the suicide bombers, who are eager to meet their 27 virgins and be celebrated as heroes by their mothers.

Other posters were implying that suicide bombers are dying honourably for a cause, and that Americans, or at least 'bourgeous' Americans would never do so, and that this is somehow a discredit or disadvantage to Americans.

I was attempting to point out that:

(1) Americans - like those in other countries - are frequently ready to risk their lives for a cause.

(2) Most of the people who are making such comparisons between Americans and Palestinian suicide bombers would probably claim to be 'anti-war'. It seems odd to me that anti-war progressives would express such approval for the willingness to die- and kill - for a cause.

I was not implying that American or British soldiers are LIKE suicide bombers. Soldiers are professional; are going where their governments send them, rather than on their own missions; and are in general not suicidal, or inclined to risk their lives *unnecessarily*, as you point out. I am sure that most soldiers would indeed be offended, not only by comparisons to suicide bombers, but by the sort of exaggerated sentimentality about making the 'supreme sacrifice' which tends to characterize those who support wars in which they are *not* likely to risk their lives.

My comments were more about what I consider the incongruity about rejecting the old-fashioned view 'sacrifice in war is in itself honourable' when it comes to conventional wars, while apparently accepting it with regard to suicide bombers.

or "understand" them, as opposed to seeing the action as the disgusting and despicable action it is.

No matter how much one sides with the plight of the Palestinians, excusing the actions of suicide bombers, thinking them only "freedom fighters" or "resisters" or "honorable" is really quixotic. Suicide bombers kill themselves and as many innocent people as they can. There is absolutely nothing honorable in that.

...but the reality is that it's useless to try to combat something without understanding why it happens and the motivations of those who do it....

to refuse orders, to do all they can to disrupt this illegal war.

Many of the Americans "willing" to die for their country are in reality willing to sell their lives or limbs, for the I am told $30,000 sign up bonus they get, it has not a whit to do with freedom, spreading democracy, love of country, patriotism, or all of that "honorable" stuff.

People who choose to blow themselves up, and well as as many other people as possible, are certainly "psychologically stable".

:sarcasm:

This is about the most idiotic excuse for suicide bombers that I have read in awhile.

Maybe you could explain what's so idiotic about what the researchers found?

On the whole, military and paramilitary organizations do tend to try to exclude obviously unstable people from dangerous operations (if only because such people are more likely to endanger their own side in the process).

They are fanatics, who are willing to sacrifice themselves as well as others for a cause. There are many people who are prepared to kill for a cause, and in the process to *risk* their own lives - if this were not the case, wars could not happen. There are a rather smaller number who are prepared to face *certain* death for themselves at the same time killing others for a cause. But they certainly exist - e.g. Japanese kamikaze pilots during the war, as well as the various groups of suicide bombers. And as the study indicates, this is not associated with mental illness (in contrast with most cases where an individual kills others and then him/herself in a non-political context).

If the finding of this study are accurate, it makes the already deplorable acts of suicide bombing even more heinous. That these killers were aware that they would be murdering innocent people and still went ahead with the act anyway shows just how much Israeli lives have been dehumanized among those who would commit or encourage these actions.

it is that one side has the leisure of being able to take their time about it and not commit suicide bombings but use slower more methodical methods like destroying crops, blockades, physical abuse, evictions from property and yes sometimes murder for sport, ect you know the thing that those with a clear upper hand can do as they please. The same thing happens in Iraq and Afghanistan it is tragic for both sides, but the death of one "master" in any of these conflicts will always be seen as murder and answered by the deaths of many, many, more "murderers" a fact touted and believed to be completely acceptable and justifiable if not outright honorable by many.

I will agree with Azurnoir on how both sides have dehumanized each other. It seems to me that the only possible resolution to the entire conflict is to figure out why they are doing so in a matter that both groups can agree with and work from there. Obviously, considering the thousands of years of dissension and dehumanizing propaganda disseminated from by both sides, this will be a seemingly insurmountable feat that can only begin to work when everyone involved is literally too battle-weary to continue the slaughter.

(Hi, DU.)

Maybe grassroots organizations bringing the two sides together in support of peace will finally influence the leaders

www.allmep.org

www.onevoicemovement.org

www.bsst.org.uk

www.theparentscircle.com


Welcome to DU.

Y'know, the ones who were calling for flattening residential areas of Gaza. Desperation and fear tends to lead people to not worry about whether the targets of their attacks are innocent civilians or not, and this is not unique amongst suicide bombers when it comes to the I/P conflict. It happens amongst Israelis and Palestinians and there's far too much dehumanisation going on on both sides....