Sacred Suicide

Chapter 8
So Costly a Sacrifice Upon the Altar of Freedom: Human Bombs, Suicide Attacks, and Patriotic Heroes

Mattias Gardell

Introduction

In the biblical story of Samson (Judges 13–16), the hero commits mass murder by killing himself. The Israelites had lived under Philistine rule for forty years when God caused a barren women to give birth to a national liberator. “The boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb” said the angel. “He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” Bestowed by God with supernatural strength, Samson performs daring deeds, such as killing a lion with his bare hands, burning down the Philistines’ grain stores, olive groves and vineyards, and slaying a thousand enemies with the jawbone of an ass. Eventually, Samson’s mistress Delilah made him reveal the secret of his strength: his head had never been shaved. One night when Samson was asleep, Delilah let someone shave off his hair. Samson’s eyes were gouged out, and he was brought to Gaza in shackles. Bound to a pair of supporting pillars in a temple before the Philistine nobles and thousands of spectators, Samson prayed to God that he would regain his power to get revenge on the Philistines. “Let me die with the Philistines,” said Samson, and he pulled the pillars together with such force that the house collapsed on the rulers and all the people who were gathered there. “Thus he was able to kill many more Philistines when he died than while he lived.”

The story of Samson and Delilah, with its themes of heroism, love, betrayal, and self-sacrifice, has fascinated people throughout history. Samson’s story has been portrayed in art, theatre, opera, film, and literature. In modern evangelical tradition, Samson is exemplary. For example, the Evangelical Brobyggarna (Bridge Builders) hail Samson as a “heroic freedom fighter,” “famous for his superhuman physical strength, resourcefulness and many accomplishments in his fight against the Philistines” (Brobyggarna 2008). In rabbinic literature, Samson embodies the Lord’s power, the righteous avenger. In secular Israeli nationalist discourse, Samson is a personification of Jewish strength, the male warrior hero who is willing to sacrifice his life for Israel’s victory. The “Samson Option” became the name of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program that began in the mid-1960s (Hersh 1991). David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Moshe Dayan regarded nuclear weapons as a last resort: like Samson, they would take the enemy with them in death. Israel’s willingness to act as Samson if attacked was hailed by popular apocalypticist Hal Lindsey: “Israel will not allow itself to be destroyed as a weakling, and certainly will not die alone, even if it has to destroy itself to nuke the Middle East” (Lindsey 2007).

Glorification of the male warrior who sacrifices his life to inflict defeat on the enemy has been a recurring feature of heroic tales for many centuries. So, why are we filled with such horror by the modern “suicide bomber” figure? Comparing empirical data collected mainly in Palestine during the second Intifada, this chapter on suicide attacks as a resistance strategy reflects on this issue. Why are we more horrified by a suicide attack that leaves dozens dead, than we are by a drone attack that takes many more lives?

Life as a Weapon

Conventionally, the study of modern suicide attacks begins with the Japanese kamikaze pilot who made his debut in 1944, during the final year of World War II. Inspired by ultra-nationalist patriotism, samurai ideals of bushido (“the warrior’s way”) and the machine’s prominent role in modernity’s ideology of technology, hundreds of Japanese young men formally volunteered their bodies in order to become living missiles and to guide their bomb-equipped fighter planes or submarines against the US Navy’s aircraft carriers and destroyers (Axell and Kase 2004). Kamikaze means “divine wind,” and alludes to the legendary typhoon that overturned Kublai Khan’s invasion attempt in 1281, by sinking his huge fleet, and all its crew. Read as evidence of the nation’s unique position in the eyes of the divine, the story was re-actualized in Japanese nationalist discourse before the looming US invasion when the kamikaze units were formed. The official designation was shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai ( “special attack unit, the divine wind”). The signs for ‘divine wind’, can be read in Chinese (shinpū), as did the Japanese Imperial administration, or in Japanese (kamikaze), which eventually became the term that was universally recognized. In postwar Japan, the pilots who were part of this special attack unit are hailed as patriots who voluntarily gave their lives to the country’s defense. There are statues of kamikaze pilots in various Japanese cities, and war museums, including Kanoya, and the old military airport in Chiran. The pilots’ heroic narratives are articulated in Japanese novels, manga stories, poetry and motion pictures, such as the 1993 blockbuster Gekkou no Natsu (“Summer of the Moonlight Sonata”), and the 2001 epic Hotaru (“Firefly”). In Japanese youth culture, the term “kamikaze” has “cool” connotations (c.f. “bad” in English). “Kamikaze” is the name of a strong alcoholic drink made with vodka, orange liqueur, syrup and sugar; Kamikaze is the name of a popular rock fanzine, and the term is used in marketing strategies by companies that sell extreme sports products such as fast motorcycles.

In Western parlance, a kamikaze pilot is a “suicide pilot,” a brainwashed robot rather than a hero, and figuratively the term is used for fanatical people who recklessly engage in impossible enterprises or ill-conceived projects that are doomed to fail. For example, the Christian evangelist who went to Afghanistan to convert the Taliban to Christianity was called the “kamikaze missionary” (Gunnarson 2007).

Significantly, the terms “kamikaze pilots” or “suicide pilots” are not employed for the American pilots who carried out similar actions during World War II. Nor are these pilots mentioned in the history of modern suicide attacks. Yet, the Japanese kamikaze pilots were preceded by American pilots, who used their lives and planes as weapons, including in the defense of the US colony of the Philippines, in December 1941. For example, on December 8, 1941, Captain Colin P. Kelly sacrificed his life by intentionally guiding his bomber right into a Japanese warship, an act for which he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Kelly was not considered a suicide pilot, but rather a true American hero whose legend was magnified after death. There is a Colin P. Kelly Memorial in Madison, Florida, a Colin P. Kelly Street in San Francisco, a Colin Kelly Middle School in Eugene, Oregon, a Colin P. Kelly Highway and Colin P. Kelly Post Office in Florida, and the US Navy named one of their vessels USS Colin P Kelly. There are Kelly portraits in oil, his statue stands at an American air base in the Philippines, and his exemplary deed is retold in comics, including an issue of True Comics used in US schools and military education.

There are other heroic tales, including that of Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, who played a key role in the Payback Mission, a death-defying attack on Tokyo in April 1942, from which none of the participants thought they would escape alive. The story is retold in the sentimental commemorative website Home of Heroes (homeofheroes.com 1999): Japan had won sweeping victories against the US military in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reasoned that a spectacular operation was needed to prove that the Japanese were not invincible. Why not an attack against Tokyo? Although it would not have any immediate military value, Roosevelt thought the symbolic, psychological gain would be invaluable. A select group of aviators, who were perfectly aware of the fact that the fuel would not be sufficient to return to the US airbase if they managed to reach the mission’s target, was secretly trained and led by Doolittle. “I don’t intend to be taken prisoners,” said Doolittle. “I’m 45 years old and have lived a full life. If my ‘plane is crippled beyond any possibility of fighting or escape, I’m going to have my crew bail out and then I’m going to dive my B-25 into the best military target I can find.”

The operation was successful, but at the cost of all the planes. Three airmen died. Eight were captured and faced a Japanese military trial. Returning planes ran out of fuel and crashed over China. Roosevelt did not want to reveal how the attack was planned, and announced to the world that the avenging heroes had come from Shangri-La, the mythical paradise in the Himalayas. A US aircraft carrier was named the USS Shangri-La in honor of the event; those who died during the attack received the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the story has been retold in more or less embroidered Hollywood productions, such as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) with Spencer Tracy as Doolittle, and Pearl Harbor (2001), featuring Alec Baldwin as Doolittle.

For the purpose of this chapter, the most significant difference is neither the number of death-defying pilots (there were far more Japanese), nor the fact that many of the pilots survived (as also happened to Japanese pilots), or that the actions were remembered as patriotic heroism rather than irrational suicide attacks (as indexed in both Japanese and US military history). Rather, it is the fact that it is the American, and not the Japanese, nationalist narrative that generally has been accepted as sound, which points to the victor’s ability to objectify historiography as history.

Following World War II, the history of suicide missions continues in various armed conflicts and political contexts. Before 1980, the method was unusual, though not unknown. Robert A. Pape (2003, 2006) lists 188 suicide attacks between 1983—when Hezbollah carried out the spectacular attacks on French and US military bases in southern Lebanon—and the first years of the second Intifada, 2000–01. The secular Tamil Tigers’ elite unit, the Black Tigers, carried out the most attacks—75 of the 188—as part of the armed struggle for Tamil independence in Sri Lanka. Other parties to employ the tactic include: the armed wing of the Kurdish secular-nationalist Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK); Chechen rebels against Russia; Iranian soldiers who braved Iraqi troops and minefields in the 1980s; the vanguard jihadis who engaged the United States and Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s; Kashmiri separatists, and militant Islamists who fought the regimes in Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s. Propelled in part by the attention to the method paid by globalized media, suicide attacks became a global fashion after the millennium, embraced by individuals and movements in Algeria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Egypt, England, Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Spain, the United States, and Uzbekistan, including the coordinated attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, which remain the most spectacular (Pedahzur 2005; Pape 2006; Gambetta 2006; Reuter 2004; Hafez 2007).

Noticeably, the method has not been monopolized by any particular category of people but used by Americans, Japanese, Tamils, Kurds, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secularists, socialists, separatists, and ultra-nationalists: typically as a last resort against an enemy perceived as militarily superior. This also applies to the American airmen who chose to use their planes as weapons against the Japanese. The attacks came at a time when the US military lost battle after battle to the Japanese, who then appeared militarily superior. When war fortunes turned and the Japanese were forced to retreat, American suicide attacks ended in favor of other methods of killing. Conversely, Japanese kamikaze pilots were not deployed until 1944, during the final phase of the war when Japan was being bombed and American occupation was at their doorstep.

Martyrs, Terrorists, and Invested Knowledge

Palestinian suicide attacks/martyr operations differ from their predecessors in at least two significant respects. Unlike the American, Japanese, and Iranian soldiers, Palestinian martyrs were not backed by a state. In Palestine, there are no well-funded cinematic industries to make epic war films that could move the public to tears over the heroic warriors’ sacrifices for the nation. There are no finances to build war museums, or even to cast magnificent statues. Marketers of the daring deeds must make do with home-produced videos, printed martyr posters to adorn the walls along local streets, and medallions with martyrs’ pictures and names to hang on a necklace. Unlike the Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah and the PKK, Palestine martyrs of the second Intifada were not trained guerrilla soldiers, nor part of a special command unit or even a militia. Rather, they were civilians who acted independently or, more commonly, had volunteered as martyrs to the command of the armed wing of some Palestinian faction, who then assisted with funding and logistics, and took credit for the operation.

All social knowledge is interested, contextual, and situational. Few contemporary fields of political knowledge have such a diversity of stakeholders who have so much invested in the truth-claims generated from each perspective, as the Palestine–Israel conflict. The very naming of a specific act or event depend on from where the speaker is talking, which means that a similar action can be labeled differently, according to who is talking and who the actor is. Let me exemplify. In the prelude to the summer war of 2006, an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian forces on June 25. The incident was condemned immediately by the then Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson (2006): “Kidnappings of this kind can never be accepted.” The day before, on June 24, two Palestinian soldiers had been captured by Israeli military, without Eliasson responding. Of course, only a state with resources to legal violence may “arrest” an offender, which links the usage of the terms to the root of the conflict: since the UN Partition Plan of 1947 for Palestine to establish two independent states in the area, only Israel has yet been recognized. However, as Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal, and sovereignty under international law is vested in the population under occupation, the Israeli forces only exert authority in the Occupied Territories as a trustee of the sovereign, and cannot legally act as a sovereign state, and “arrest” Palestinians who exert their legal right to resist the occupation (Ben-Naftali et al. 2005). Yet, mainstream Western media uncritically tend to detach the terms “arresting” and “kidnapping” from their legal context when applied to the Israel–Palestine conflict. Israelis “arrest” Palestinians, while Palestinians “kidnap” Israelis. The reverse seems unthinkable: when do we hear of Israelis who “kidnap” Palestinians, or Palestinians “arresting” Israelis? This may explain why Eliasson did not repeat his principled stance—that kidnappings can never be tolerated as a legitimate political means—when four days later, on June 29, the Israeli military raided Palestinian cities and abducted twenty Palestinian MPs, including eight ministers in the newly elected Palestinian administration. How would Eliasson have assessed the event if the actors of the scenario had been reversed: if the Palestinian National Authority had ordered an armed raid into Israel to abduct members of the Knesset?

This logic affects and complicates the conversation about the kind of armed resistance we are discussing. The concepts “suicide attacks” and “martyrdom operations” are not neutral or objective, but products of opposing political perspectives. The terms thus carry a bias, and the fact that consumers of Western media are more accustomed to the term Palestinian “suicide attack” than “martyr operation” is in itself noteworthy. Attempting to get around this problem, in this chapter I will frequently resort to the stylistically clumsy formula of “suicide bombings/martyrdom operations,” sometimes reversing the order, or opting for the less burdened neologism “human bomb.” When, mainly for stylistic reasons, I choose to use the term “suicide bombing” or “martyr operation,” I urge the reader to keep in mind that one person’s suicide bomber may be another’s martyr, and vice versa: one person’s self-sacrificing hero may be the other’s horrifying suicide terrorist.

Suicide Attacks/Martyr Operations under the First and Second Intifada

The wave of Palestinian martyrdom operations during the second Intifada was preceded by a smaller series of suicide bombings between 1994 and 1997. It commenced following the American-Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein’s suicide attack/martyr operation in Hebron, February 25, 1994. Goldstein entered the crowded Ibrahimi Mosque in the morning during the month of Ramadan and shot dead 29 Palestinians before he was overpowered and beaten to death. Following this, Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a series of attacks, formulated as a “response” to Israeli aggression, to which the Israeli military “answered” in an escalating spiral of mutual “counterattacks” (Tamimi 2007: 159ff, Reuter 2004). In Beyt Lid, outside Tel Aviv, on April 4, 1994, 19-year-old Ali Imawi pulled out his Uzi and shot into a military bus. One soldier died and three were wounded. Like Goldstein, Ali had no chance to get away and his bullet-riddled body was displayed on newscasts. A few months later, Ali’s childhood friend Hisham approached an Israeli checkpoint on a bomb-equipped bike. As revenge for Ali and the murder of Hani al-Abid, the Palestinian leader whom the Israeli military killed in revenge for Ali’s attack, Hisham set off the bomb and took three Israeli soldiers with him in death (Andoni 1997).

In total, there were 16 Palestinian suicide attacks/martyrdom operations between 1994 and 1997, including car bombs, bicycle bombs, and body bombs, which claimed at least 162 lives (Pape 2003). The attacks carried out during this period were, according to Palestinian polls, quite unpopular. Less than one in five, or 18 percent of Palestinian respondents, supported the method. This can be contrasted with Palestinian public opinion during the second Intifada, when over a hundred suicide attacks claimed more than five hundred lives, and two thousand more were injured. According to polls from the first year of the second Intifada, the figures were reversed: four-fifths, or about 80 percent of the respondents gave the attacks their support. Attitudes towards martyrdom operations/suicide bombings in the mid-1990s and early 2000s had thus shifted diametrically (Reuter 2004: 184).

A possible explanation for the shift in public opinion may be found in the changed political context. During the mid-1990s, a majority of Palestinians believed that the 1993 Oslo Treaty would result in a two-state solution and lasting peace. However, Palestinians grew gradually disenchanted with the prospects of the future as Israel colonized more and more Palestinian land instead of dismantling settlements. Close to 90 percent of the territory that, under the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, should have been divided between two states (one Jewish-Israeli and one Arab-Palestinian), were now under Israeli control. Palestine was fragmented into a scattered archipelago, with 220 mini-reserves or micro-homelands functioning as isolated enclaves surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory. The occupied West Bank was divided into three areas: Zones A, B, and C. In Zone A, which represented less than 3 percent of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority controlled everything except water, security, and borders, which were controlled by Israel. In Zone B, which represented more than 14 percent of the territory, a joint rule was established between the Israeli occupying power and the Palestinian Authority, with the exception of water, security and border crossings, which were controlled by the Israeli authorities. Zone C, which accounted for over 72 percent of the territory, was controlled by the Israelis (RWB 2003; B’Tselem 1999; Gahrton 2008; Said 2001, 1995, 1996). Peace talks dealt with the transferring of small percentages of territory from one zone to another, but did not touch on the main issues of the conflict, such as ending the occupation, Palestinians’ right to national independence in a sovereign state, the status of Jerusalem, and the refugees’ right of return.

Israel allowed the Palestinian Authority to gain control over Ramallah and Jericho, but introduced a ban on Palestinians traveling without a permit between the Palestinian-controlled areas, passing between Zones A, B and C, between separated locations within a single zone, between the West Bank and Gaza, and no Palestinians were allowed to visit Jerusalem. A far-reaching network of military checkpoints and fortified borders enforced the prohibitions on Palestinians moving between Palestinian cities inside the occupied territory. To Palestinians, the result was claustrophobic. To visit relatives, see friends, bring goods to market, harvest crops, get to university, get to the hospital, and commute between home and work became impossible or extremely time-consuming. The building of a Palestinian infrastructure was prevented, unemployment grew and the Palestinian enclaves became dependent on foreign aid, which in turn was dependent on Israeli goodwill in permitting the movement of goods to and from the Palestinian mini-enclaves. The outside world saw perhaps only a small amount of this. Many believed that it was only a matter of time before a Palestinian state would be declared. The overall situation created tension, and frustration in the Palestinian community, which was released in the second Intifada, which began in September 2000.

Hence, suicide attacks/martyrdom operations were at the time one of the most lethal methods of Palestinian resistance. One reason is the absence of militarily advanced weapons in a battle against an militarily well-equipped enemy. As one of the Palestinian resistance fighters I talked with in Nablus in February 2003, put it:

The Israelis are afraid of our martyrs. But we can swap: give us your Apaches [attack helicopters], F-16s [attack aircraft], Merkavas [tanks] and APCs [armored vehicles] and you can get our stones, slingshots and explosive belts. Then we can hunt your children, demolish your cities and make the world to feel sorry for us when you blow yourselves in the air.

The prevailing media representation is of Palestinian suicide attacks carried out by frustrated young male Islamists from the underclass. This image stands in sharp contradiction to the empirical data I collected during field studies in the West Bank in 2002 and 2003. This material includes 207 people who used their lives as weapons, either as human bombs or by conducting attacks with other weapons, without viable prospects of escaping alive. The dominant age group was 20–29 years, with the larger portion being older than 25. The age group of 30–39 years was larger (29 individuals) than the under-20 bracket (21 individuals). Nine people were between 40 and 49 years, and five people were 50 years or older. Although most were men, there are six women in the data. It is difficult to determine what percentage were Islamists, but some guidance can be found using the organizations that took credit for the attack. Nearly half of the attacks were carried out with the support of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the remainder were secular, socialist, or nationalist, national liberation organizations. The attacks were carried out not only by men or women from the lower classes, but by people of every possible class background. Judged from letters and testimonies left behind, a majority of 72 percent cast their action in terms of national liberation, or personal retaliation (17 percent). Most subjects who sacrificed their lives had a relative or friend killed by the Israeli military, or had witnessed a fatal Israeli military attack, which had made the occupation personal.

These findings are consistent with other research. Robert J. Brym and Bader Ajaj (2006) investigated the background and rationale for 138 suicide attacks between 2000 and 2005. They narrowly defined this category as attacks with explosives, but no firearms or vehicles. They found that 82 percent of the attacks were reactive, that is, explicitly cast as a “response” to an Israeli aggression. In terms of personal motives, messages left by 101 of the subjects were dominated by nationalist themes, usually phrased as retaliation for Israeli aggression against Palestine (46 percent). This was followed in numbers by personal retribution for the murder of a relative or friend (23 percent), while religious motivations were only expressed in 2 percent of messages. In terms of official statements announced by the organizations that claimed responsibility for the attacks, nationalism again dominated (37 percent), followed by retaliation for Israeli attacks against the organization or its representatives (22 percent). Only 7 percent claimed religious motives.

In the Palestinian culture of resistance, martyrs who chose to sacrifice their life were attributed a heroic status. News of a deed, broadcast through television, radio, newspapers, and weblogs, attracted a wide audience. Homemade video productions with the dead martyr’s farewell greetings, ghastly scenes showing the bloody remains of Palestinian victims of Israeli military assaults, slain children, crying mothers, and demolished houses, followed by news clips from television detailing the lethal outcome of the martyr’s attack on the enemy, were sold in local video stores. Creative filmmakers composed “best of” martyr operations, sometimes with themes such as martyrs from specific areas or cities, or martyrs from individual national liberation organizations. Heroic tales were constructed, often including details about how a particular operation occurred; how the brave—alone or in pairs—crossed the Israeli border, how they disguised themselves, and how they managed to get through into enemy territory and achieve their goal. These narratives became part of contemporary folklore. Martyr posters in chromatic colors were plastered on the walls of the city. Portraits of the sacrificing warrior heroes were depicted against backdrops of killed Palestinian children, Israeli military, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, or the general havoc of the martyrdom operation. Other themes included the martyr’s portrait inserted in romanticized scenes of nature’s beauty, with horses galloping in green pastures, lush vegetation, rivers, and beaches. The motif of the sea had a particular impact in Nablus. From the rooftops and surrounding hills of Nablus, one could see the ocean; so close, yet impossible to reach as it was on the other side of the border in what is now Israel. The sea could be seen, but never felt: it beckoned alongside freedom. A martyr operation received extra attention in the martyr’s village or hometown. Armed militiamen fired salutes of respect, the street in which the martyr lived may be renamed in his honor by local graffiti artists, medallions with the hero’s portrait were sold out quickly, and worn with sad pride by relatives and friends. Relatives, neighbors, and representatives of the city’s important families and political factions came to give their homage and condolences.

Taken together, the news reports, martyr posters, videos, and medallions, heroic tales, lyrics, and graffiti, mourning rituals, and salutes of respect, provided new potential martyrs with information of what would happen if they chose to sacrifice their lives in the asymmetrical war of national resistance. In the confrontation with a militarily superior enemy, martyr operations provided a concrete opportunity for those who desired to do something. It was a method that obviously terrorized the dominant power, a path for the brave who wanted to inscribe their names in the annals of national liberation. As the principal of a school in Ramallah put it: “As a living person here, you’re nothing. As a dead person you can become a hero, at least for a moment” (Reuter 2004: 167). During this particular time, the Palestinian militias did not need to seek for recruits as they had the pick of the crop. Palestinians volunteered to such an extent that the militias had to refuse most of the hopeful prospects. “People, including young people, need to feel respected,” stressed Eyad el Sarraj, Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza:

They want status within their society. Today the martyr is glorified. The martyr for them is the power of the people, the power to take revenge on behalf of the victims. They have all these romantic notions. They see the martyr as courageously sacrificing himself or herself for the sake of everyone, as a symbol of the struggle for freedom, because this is what these people are fighting for. (2002)

Their Suicide Terrorists, Our Heroes

To give one’s life for the lives of others and for the sake of freedom has long been one of humanity’s most noble acts. In a letter written in 1864 to Mrs. Lydia Bixby of Boston, who lost five sons in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln wrote the famous words: “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” The final words are carved in relief on the statue of Lady Columbia at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, dedicated to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the nation during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and one of Hawaii’s more popular tourist attractions with millions of visitors each year. Here, Lincoln’s words speak to the dead heroes and their families: “The genuine pride you must feel at having made such a costly sacrifice on the altar of freedom.” Lincoln’s Bixby letter is key to Steven Spielberg’s war epic Saving Private Ryan (1998), where a group of US soldiers led by Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) go deep behind German lines in Normandy to bring home Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), who has lost all his brothers in World War II. When the soldiers—after gruesome hardships and severe losses—finally find Ryan, he is with a decimated squad that has been tasked with defending a bridge from the approaching Germans. He refuses to return home: “You can tell my mother that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left. And that there was no way I was deserting them. I think she’d understand that.” Realizing that Ryan will not leave the bridge, the rescue team joins Ryan and his men in the unequal struggle against the Germans. When air support finally arrives, all but Ryan and Miller have died. “James, earn this,” says a shot, bleeding and dying Miller to Ryan a moment before he too dies, “earn it.” While the narrator reads Lincoln’s letter, the film shifts from past to present. An aged Ryan walks slowly through the memorial cemetery’s rows of white crosses alongside his wife, children, and grandchildren who symbolize the Americans who could live thanks to the patriotic soldiers’ sacrifices. Ryan kneels before the cross that bears Miller’s name. “Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge.” Ryan whispered, his voice trembling. “I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.” Ryan gets up on his feet, stands back and salutes. He turns, moving slowly towards his family, and the film fades out into a giant American flag proudly flying in the wind as testimony to all those who sacrificed their lives on the altar of freedom. Saving Private Ryan was nominated for eleven Oscars and became the blockbuster of 1998, collecting $480 million globally in its first year of release. Spielberg’s epic is only one of many films that portray the male warrior hero who sacrifices his life for the greater good. The theme recurs in Band of Brothers, 300, Armageddon, Independence Day, Inglourious Basterds, and other war epics that won a worldwide audience of beating hearts, not only in the US, but also in Palestine. In light of the long tradition of these films, it seems strange that we do not recognize the Palestinians who put their precious sacrifice on the altar of freedom in the same way. Why is that?

In an open letter to George W. Bush, former Lebanese Prime Minister Selim el-Hoss asked, “Those deplorable suicidal operations which you brand as terrorism, have they not ever for a moment prompted you to ask yourself the question: why would a young boy or girl be willing to sacrifice himself or herself with utter peace of mind and full determination?” Can it really be that we do not understand? A Hezbollah member interviewed by anthropologist Ghassan Hage (2003) during fieldwork in southern Lebanon could not possibly imagine that this was the case:

The Americans pretend not to understand the suicide bombers and consider them evil. But I am sure they do. As usual, they are hypocrites. What is so strange about saying: “I am not going to let you rob me of all my humanity and all my will?” What is so strange about saying: “I’d rather kill you on my own terms and kill myself with you rather than be led to my death like a sheep on your own terms?” I know that the Americans fully understand this because this is exactly what they were celebrating about the guy who downed the Philadelphia flight on September 11, the one where the hijackers failed to hit their target. Isn’t that exactly what he must have said when he decided to kill himself and everyone else by bringing the plane down? Didn’t he say to those hijacking him: “I’d rather kill you on my own terms and kill myself with you rather than be led to my death like a sheep on your own terms?”

This Hezbollah member referred to the fourth suicide attack on September 11, when a number of the passengers on Flight 93 banded to fight the hijackers. This caused the plane, which was probably on the way to the White House or Capitol Hill, to crash outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing the hijackers and all other passengers. As Susan Faludi (2008: 69) notes, this incident was perfect for mythmaking, due to the facts of what actually happened being so scant. In a “ferocious assault,” Newsweek wrote, a “band of patriots came together to defy death and save a symbol of freedom.” In Heroes: 50 Stories of the American Spirit, Lenore Skomal (2002: 12) states that “as much as the terrorists had meticulously planned their suicide mission, they could never have foreseen the problems they’d encounter trying to maintain control on a flight carrying what you have to concede was God’s All-Star Team.” Congress instituted the Honoring the Passengers and Crew of United Flight 93 Act to award medals of honor to the heroes who sacrificed their lives to inflicting defeat upon an enemy. A national memorial was built on the site where the plane crashed, and Newark Airport, from where Flight 93 took off, was renamed Newark Liberty Airport. Although we cannot determine exactly what happened during the drama onboard of Flight 93 with absolute certainty, we can note that the passengers who braved the hijackers are said to have performed a suicide attack under another name: they were patriots who sacrificed their lives on the altar of freedom. To the Hezbollah member, the analogy between the hijacked plane and occupied Palestine was as obvious as his amazement that Americans did not seem to recognize as heroes the Palestinian braves who sacrificed their lives to attack the occupying power that has taken control of their country and threatened to completely devastate their nation.

Hereby, we have returned to the issue raised in the introduction: the horror we feel in the face of the suicide bomber figure. Why do we seem to become more upset by a suicide attack that ends ten lives than by an airborne bomb attack that ends hundreds of lives? It cannot reasonably be because the act is directed against civilians. Civilian casualties are not a prerequisite for a suicide attack; they can be strictly directed at military targets and still keep the same name. Conversely, history shows that airborne bombardier attacks do not only kill soldiers, but may well harvest civilian lives. While a suicide attack might kill ten people in a pizzeria, an airborne bomb attack may kill as many in the pizzeria and reduce the whole city block to rubble without arousing the same amount of horror. If it is not about civilian casualties, why are the former seen as a terrifying barbarian, and the latter a distinguished man of honor, a war hero?

As detailed by Edward Said (1978), the Orientalist knowledge tradition produces the Oriental as a distinct species by “nature” set apart from universal man. The essentialized dichotomy of them and us, East and West, Muslims and normal people, recurs in a series of opposites in which the “us” of the speaking subject is given meaning by being contrasted to an imagined “them”—irrational/rational, barbarian/civilized, underdeveloped/developed, despotic/democratic, unfree/free—in a multiplicative chain of binary oppositions. Although Islam has been one of Europe’s many religions for more than thirteen hundred years, and Muslims have been active contributors to the history we call “Western,” the doctrine of essentialized difference makes it possible to construe “Muslims” as a collective community “by nature” alien to and distinct from “Westerners.” From this point of departure, cultural racist theories of antagonistic identities in terms of a “clash of civilization” may be formulated, in which two ontologically distinct beings are pitted against each other (Gardell 2010). Since the figure of the Oriental is not perceived of as an autonomous subject acting on high moral grounds, but as an irrational barbarian, it becomes impossible to think “hero who sacrificed his life on the altar of freedom” of a Palestinian. Conversely, it becomes impossible to think “crazy, sexually frustrated suicide terrorist” about Samson, Colin P. Kelly, Private Ryan, and the heroes of Flight 93. A Palestinian becomes a suicide bomber because he is Oriental: the value of the act is determined by the perceived nature of the actor.

“There is a world of difference between Western values and Muslim ones,” declared Raphael Israeli (2003: 13) in his study of suicide terrorism: “One of the more puzzling aspects of Islamic terrorism, which has almost no parallels in other cultures, is the readiness of the perpetrators to blow themselves up in the process of destroying the enemy” (ibid.: 71), a phenomenon Israeli terms “islamikaze.” Israeli sees the rationale as uniquely Islamic, explicable only with reference to the fact that the perpetrators are Muslims, construed as an imagined collective set apart from universal man. To these Muslims, “Paradise is unexpectedly depicted in exciting, plastic, worldly, and pleasurable terms, not in some vague spiritual entity worthy of mystics and saints of other traditions. Sex and wine, the two foremost taboos in traditional Islamic society, are exalted,” Israeli claims, “as accessible and permissible in unlimited quantities” (ibid.: 88). Moreover, far from applauding the martyrs as heroes who sacrificed their lives on the altar of freedom, their families adore them because they believe that they “fulfil a societal-family ideal, by preparing the grounds in Paradise for the whole family to follow: something that makes their act bearable, not to say desirable, for their loved and loving ones.” Hence, Muslims blow themselves and others into pieces in order to drink alcohol and be sexually active in heaven. Now, the most remarkable is not Israeli’s thesis, but the extent to which such a remarkable thesis has gained ground in Western conversations about the suicide terrorism phenomenon, which says a lot about the current standing of cultural racist thought. How we explain the problem of suicide attacks has implications for how the phenomenon should be addressed. If the problem is perceived to stem from a political situation, there must be a political solution. If the problem is caused by sexually frustrated religious fanatics who wish to go to heaven, the security apparatus may be entrusted to protect us by eliminating the problem with extraordinary methods. Hence the Israeli Police Minister Gideon Ezra’s proposal to expand collective punishment by killing all the relatives of the suicide bombers, and desecrating their remains by burying them in pig blood and pig hides (Reuter 2004: 198).

An additional explanation for the horror caused by a suicide attack concerns Western notions of civilized killing in warfare. Since the dawn of Europe’s colonial expansion, Western wars in Africa, Asia, and the Americas—typically referred to in terms of civilization’s war against barbarism—has been characterized by superior military technology resulting in minimal losses. In the battle of Omdurman in 1898, to take one example, British colonial troops used the portable Maxim Gun, which was the world’s first fully automatic, water-cooled machine gun that could fire 500–600 rounds per minute. “The whole face of the slope became black with swarming savages,” wrote war correspondent Winston Churchill, referring to the sight of Sudanese warriors marching towards the colonial army with pride, spears, and swords. There was never any danger:

The infantry fired steadily and stolidly, without hurry or excitement, for the enemy were far away and the officers careful. Besides, the soldiers were interested in the work and took great pains. The empty cartridge-cases, tinkling to the ground, formed a small but growing heap beside each man. And all the time out on the plain on the other side bullets were shearing through flesh, smashing and splintering bone; blood spouted from terrible wounds; valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whistling metal, exploding shells, and spurting dust—suffering, despairing, dying. Such was the first phase of the battle of Omdurman. (Churchill 1902: 226)

In this battle, 22,000 Sudanese were slaughtered. The Colonial Army lost 48 men. With the exception of World War II battles against Japan, the technological upper hand of the Western military in the wars against Oriental forces has persisted. In the first Iraq war, in January 1991, the US military tested new generations of advanced long-range missiles, combat helicopters, attack aircraft, bombers, night bombers, warships, and armored vehicles against the Iraqi Army’s outdated tanks, old pieces of artillery and ground troops. Up to 200,000 Iraqi soldiers and 100,000 Iraqi civilians died. The United States lost 148 men, a quarter of whom were their own troops shot in error. The other 27 states of the US-led Coalition lost a total of 89 soldiers, accidents included (Hiro 2003; Gardell 2005; Fisk 2005).

Today, the “civilized world” has reached a stage of military-technological development that makes it possible to conceive of war without personal sacrifice, and without “us” necessarily having to face its bloodier aspects. “We” kill “the other” from thousands of meters away, or from air-conditioned control rooms located hundreds of miles from the targeted site, with coffee in paper cups, in front of flashing computer screens. War is converted into computer games, which may certainly be exciting, challenging, and requiring of skill, but distanced from the realities of blood, intestines, brain matter, horror, grief, and devastation on the ground. This means that “we” have begun to imagine war in terms of clinical operations in which we run as little risk of lethal damage as a surgeon at the university hospital. Suicide attacks are diametrically opposite. The stake is exactly their own life. The method appears from this perspective as highly uncivilized, unsophisticated, retrograde, and, yes, barbaric. This impression is highlighted by the low-tech killing with simple explosives wrapped around the body, or homemade bombs primed in utility vehicles, bicycles, cars, old trucks without either armor or GPS, and the brutal directness of the deed in which the line of separation between killing and death collapses. There are no clinical features, no surgical precision, no spacing between the executioner and the victim. On the contrary, the remains of the perpetrator are mixed with those of the victims, a reality that seems rather remote from the control rooms and computer screens in the high-tech war where killing is separated from death.

The superiority of Western military technology in combination with discourses of Orientalism and the experience of colonial history in which the “we” of the speaking subject are always colonizing the other, creates the gap that separates “their” martyrs from “our” heroes, despite the common tradition from which we both spring. We share the same hyper-masculine romantic stories, the same heroic poetry, and the same foundational ideal that the only way to be human is to face death rather than unfreedom.

Conclusion

This common tradition means that Westerners too celebrate anti-colonial self-sacrificing heroism, at least in fiction. In the Oscar-winning Independence Day, a 1996 box-office success that drew in $816 million in revenue worldwide, and was widely popular in Palestine, the Earth is threatened by an alien high-tech civilization from outer space who arrive with their fleet aboard a giant mothership aiming to colonize the planet. The technologically superior colonizers destroy a number of the world’s major cities, and invasion is imminent. The increasingly desperate resistance movement is coordinated by the United States, and culminates on July 4. “[O]nce again we’ll be fighting for our freedom,” says President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman):

We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) and Steven Hiller (Will Smith) manage to plant a virus in the computer running the force-field that protects the colonial mothership. “All we can do now,” says Levinson, “is to pray to God.” A division of attack aircraft led by President Whitmore launches a furious counterattack. “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?” shouts pilot Russell Casse (Randy Quaid), who had previously been abused by the aliens. The resistance movement wages an unequal struggle against the colonizers’ military superiority. When the aliens prepare their most advanced weapon of mass destruction by opening a hatch in the mothership, Russel Casse realizes what he must do. He glances at the photograph of his three children. “Tell my kids I love them,” he says to the control room on Earth. “Good luck, buddy,” says the president, who realizes what Casse is going to do. “All right, you alien assholes!” roars Casse, “Up Yours!” and drives at full speed into the opened hatch in the spacecraft. The mothership explodes into a sea of fire. Back down on earth, an officer turns to Casse’s eldest son who was following the drama from the control room monitors. “What your father did was very brave. You should be proud of him.” The son smiles vaguely, looking the officer steadily in the eye, and says, “I am.”

References

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“Eliasson: Släpp soldaten fri” (Eliasson: Release the Soldier), SvT, June 28.

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Gambetta, Diego (ed) (2006). Making Sense of Suicide Missions. New York: Oxford University Press

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Reuter, Christoph (2004). My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Films

300 (2007). Zack Snyder (dir.), Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, 117 min.

Armageddon (1998). Michael Bay (dir.), Touchstone Pictures, 150 min.

Gekkou no Natsu (Summer of the Moonlight Sonata) (1993). Seijiro Koyama (dir.), Pony Canyon, 111 min.

Hotaru (Firefly) (2001). Yasuo Furuhata (dir.), Toei, 114 min.

Independence Day (1996). Roland Emmerich (dir.), 20th Century Fox, 145 min.

Pearl Harbor (2001). Michael Bay (dir.), Touchstone Pictures and Buena Vista International, 183 min.

Saving Private Ryan (1998). Steven Spielberg (dir.), DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures, 170 min.

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944). Mervyn LeRoy (dir.), MGM, 138 min.

Other

S 1434 Honoring the Passengers and Crew of United Flight 93 Act of 2001, In the Senate of the United States, 107th Congress, 1st Session, September 19, 2001.

HR 3054 True American Heroes Act, In the House of the United States, 107th Congress, 1st Session, October 5, 2001.

Chapter 8So Costly a Sacrifice Upon the Altar of Freedom: Human Bombs, Suicide Attacks, and Patriotic Heroes