I question whether there is a profile of women suicide bombers that differs from men. Of course, in a place where the gender divide is great, I expect there to be vast differences, but among women are the differences that great? I also wonder what those differences between men and women are and how they are reinforced by society.
In the interviews with failed suicide bombers, one commonality that I’ve noticed with females is that when they first come to jail and share their motivations, they are all private. The reasonings are all different, yet none (discussed) have motivations that one would immediately assume. None are religious fanatics, many aren’t religious at all. Only some cite jihad or the Qur’an as justification for their actions, but most cite personal motivation. One woman had a boyfriend before she was married, something uncommon and considered taboo by society. When her boyfriend found out she was to be married, he convinced her that if she loved him she would become part of an “action” group, a.k.a. terrorist organization. She did, and when he was questioned by Israeli authorities, he gave her up as a terrorist to save his own skin. She joined for love. Another woman was badly burned when she was younger and she believed she had no future in Palestinian society, because she was “too ugly” to be married. Her parents constantly teased her that no man would marry her and that she was most likely to be a burden, one that would feed off her parents for the rest of her life. Because she had no agency (and supposedly would never) in society, she chose to end her life in a “honorable” way. One woman was already prone to depression and had attempted suicide twice before. She fell in love when she was twenty—which was already fairly old to be marrying in Palestinian society—but her father would no accept the dowry, saying it was too small. The proposal was called off. She was so angry with her father that she turned to a terrorist organization. She stated, “I’ll get my revenge against my father by becoming a shaheeda” (103).
These are all accounts of prisoners when they first came into the prison. Berko visited months later and talked to some of the same women, and interestingly they claimed that their original motivation was different. The same woman who’s father would not allow her to marry stated eight months later that personal reasons were not why she attempted to commit martyrdom. She said that jihad was the reason, and that she was religiously motivated to overthrow the Jews. She said at the end of their interview, “In any case, my life won’t do anyone any good, and there are a lot of people who want to do it, to become shaheeds, and nothing can stop them” (106). Supposedly, Berko states that she had been indoctrinated by the other women who were part of the Fatah Tanzim operatives within the prison. It was not uncommon, according to Berko, that women would take back their original statements and instead cite motivation based upon a prescribed monologue put forth by terrorist organizations within the prisons.
Possibly, these women are originally telling the truth about their motivation, but while they were in jail they realized that it was more acceptable to carry out an attack due to religious fervor or intense love of the nation.
ANOTHER POINT:
The theme of retaliation is constant. Many bombers attempt to carry out terrorist activity in order to seek revenge. “Of course I would attack a kindergarten,” one woman stated, “I can watch your children eating and playing and blow myself up in the middle of them. Once in the Gaza Strip they shot at children in a school and threw tear gas at them” (128). The atrocity of war is cited as a main motivation for, well, more atrocity. There is a strong sense of “eye for an eye” within these interviews and the women see themselves as bravely offering up their lives for sacrifice.
Land ownership also plays a huge role in the ongoing war. Many of the suicide bomber attemptees were women around the age of twenty. Many claim that they remember events that happened in 1948 and 1967, and that their “memory” serves as their motivation. Although horrific things happened and still do, this falsification of memory, or nostalgic memory passed down through generations has a huge affect on the would-be-teenage-suicide-bombers. They claim that they used to live in what is now Israel and they want their land back. They deny the fact that many Jews lived in Israel beforehand. Of course, their land was taken away, this is true. But after sixty years, this memory of the past still incites people to war and suicide bombing.
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