This is a small summary of the introduction to Berko’s book, “The Path to Paradise.” I’ve just written down some of the important points that I will go back and address in greater detail:
Berko begins her book by asking whether suicide bombers “freely and voluntarily choose to commit suicide.” (1) Of course some suicide bombers do go looking for dispatchers, and for a variety of reasons. Berko also brings up the case of honor. Many Palestinians who are suspected of collaboration with Israel fulfill suicide bombing missions in order to restore their family honor and to possibly save their family, and themselves, from torture or death. One such bomber is the famous Ayat al-Akhras who became a human smart bomb in order to clear her father’s name and save his honor. It is important to note that within Palestinian culture, along with many other cultures-specifically those heavily influenced by Islamic practice-the act of martyrdom is considered the most highly honorable way to die and the families of suicide bombers are praised and even receive financial rewards for the brave act undertaken by a son or daughter. Other reasons for committing suicide bombings include social embarrassment, again in keeping with one’s honor. Honor killings of women by males of the family are not uncommon, and suicide bombing is not much different-except that their may be a sense of autonomy and even power in the fact that one is purposefully taking their own life on their own conditions. A friend of Berko states, “If someone decides to become a shaheed, (a martyr for Islam, or in this case a suicide bomber) every bad thing he (or she) ever did is cancelled, even if it’s a question of a woman who slept around” (2). One prisoner, Nazima, discussed her path into jail. She claims, “There are children they (dispatchers) talked into it by exploiting their youth” (2). This brings up the question mentioned earlier: are martyrs really choosing their own death or are the coerced by dispatchers, religious or political figures, or their own culture of death that asserts martyrdom equals eternal life and forgiveness, a culture that glorifies death? The culture of death is pervasive in Palestinian territories. Posters can be seen everywhere of men and women martyrs-shaheeds and shaheedas; their final statement on videotape played on televisions in many homes.
Nazima tells her story: A girlfriend had originally told her that she could help Palestinians in the resistance movements against Israel. “I went into an unfamiliar house. There was an older man there, and other, younger men in the same room…and then he told me that the following Monday I was going to carry out a suicide bombing attack, itishhad. He said, ‘Get ready, prepare yourself…’ I was very surprised when he told me I would be a shaheeda. I wasn’t planning to die like that…He said, ‘…you have to do it’” (5). Nazima eventually caved and accepted the job. She felt as though she could not ask her father or family for help because she had been in training alone with other men, without her makhram-brother, husband, or father. This type of story is repeated throughout the first half of the book. Many of the young women recruited are not religious nor particularly angry or ideologically motivated. Most all suicide bombers are recruited by friends or family and then sent to a dispatcher: always an unknown male. The power dynamic in Nazima’s story is interesting, although not unique. After meeting with a training group once, the chance of going back on one’s word is almost impossible. For some of the young women, the chances of being killed or disowned by their family are equivalent to their chances of dying by pressing the detonator. The dispatchers know this. Psychology plays a huge factor in who is chosen, or who chooses to become a bomber. A dispatcher in an Israeli jail told Berko that he specifically asked his comrades to find “sad guys”-mainly men and women “who have trouble finding themselves, sometimes influenced by anger and bitterness at their marginality, and who are willing to try anything to feel they have worth and to win the approval of society or their families” (7).
Berko notes that one of the reasons for the “explosion” of new suicide bombers is due to a disintegration of patriarchy and male dominance within the family. The father is no longer the sole breadwinner in most homes and poverty has created a new system of familial power. She states, “Often potential shaheeds view the religious individual, the ideologue, and especially the suicide bomber dispatcher as a source of the authority which, in the past was indisputably in the hands of the paterfamilias” (10).
Another interesting aspect of the suicide bombing phenomenon is group mentality. Palestinian culture has created itself as an “other” to Israel and
the surrounding Arab countries. Palestinians portray themselves as the Phoenix-esque victims; ground down by every other country and peoples, yet still able to gather their resources (people with bombs, stones, Molotov cocktails, etc.) and fight back. War psychology has become mainstream in the sense that Palestine is always at war. Life is seen as a war for survival; it is a physical, economic, territorial, and psychological war. Being at war, Palestinians have united against the enemy and thus group mentality flourishes. Berko notes that circumstance and society play a huge role in determining the individual and collective acts of suicide: “The collective social force encourages the individual to commit suicide, while in Western society it would be expected to deter him from doing so” (12). Along with a collective mentality and awareness of mortality, many suicide bombers and dispatchers must also prepare themselves psychologically in order to see the enemy as less than human. In order for individuals to become martyrs, they must “become emotionally detached, behaving mechanically on the way to the target” (10).
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