The Smile of the Human Bomb: New Perspectives on Suicide Terrorism - Hardcover

Aran, Gideon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1501724754 ISBN 13: 9781501724756

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2018

Synopsis

In 2017, nearly six thousand people were killed in suicide attacks across the world.

In The Smile of the Human Bomb, Gideon Aran dissects the moral logic of the suicide terrorism that led to those deaths. The book is a firsthand examination of the bomb site at the moment of the explosion, during the first few minutes after the explosion, and in the last moments before the explosion. Aran uncovers the suicide bomber's final preparations before embarking on the suicide mission: the border crossing, the journey toward the designated target, penetration into the site, and the behavior of both sides within it. The book sheds light on the truth of the human bomb.

Aran's gritty and often disturbing account is built on a foundation of participant observation with squads of pious Jewish volunteers who gather the scorched fragments of the dead after terrorist attacks; newly revealed documents, including interrogation protocols; interviews with Palestinian armed resistance members and retired Israeli counterterrorism agents; observations of failed suicide terrorists in jail; and conversations with the acquaintances of human bombs.

The Smile of the Human Bomb provides new insights on the Middle East conflict, political violence, radicalism, victimhood, ritual, and death and unveils a suicide terrorism scene far different from what is conventionally pictured. In the end, Aran discovers, the suicide terrorist is an unremarkable figure, and the circumstances of his or her recruitment and operation are prosaic and often accidental. The smiling human bomb is neither larger than life nor a monster, but an actor on a human scale. And suicide terrorism is a drama in which clichés and chance events play their role.

About this title

About the Author

Gideon Aran is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is author, most recently, of Kookism.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Smile of the Human Bomb

New Perspectives on Suicide Terrorism

By Gideon Aran, Jeffrey Green

Cornell University Press

Copyright © 2018 Cornell University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5017-2475-6

Contents

Preface: Anna and 'Abed, ix, 
Glossary, xxxvii, 
1. Suicide Terrorism Revisited: Introductory Notes, 1, 
2. Accidental Monsters, Unlikely Heroes (A), 31, 
3. Accidental Monsters, Unlikely Heroes (B), 76, 
4. Anatomy of a Suicide Operation, 119, 
5. Passing: An Overlooked Aspect of Suicide Terrorism, 145, 
6. Middle Eastern Twist, 168, 
7. Ritual Coproduction: Victimizer, Victim, and Sacrifice, 188, 
8. Research Strategy: Sources and Methods, 225, 
9. Concluding Comparative and Analytical Notes, 244, 
Afterword: Two Attacks on Our Moral Order, 276, 
Notes, 283, 
Index, 311, 

CHAPTER 1

Suicide Terrorism Revisited

Introductory Notes

When It All Began?

Many influential studies mistakenly date the inception of suicide terrorism to 1983. They refer to the explosion that took place on October 23 at the US Marine Corps barracks of the multinational force in Beirut (241 dead), which was followed a few minutes later by an explosion in the barracks of French paratroopers (58 dead), both carried out by Hezbollah, as the first shocking appearance of this violent phenomenon. Less than two weeks later, a human bomb sent by Hezbollah exploded the IDF headquarters in Tyre, Lebanon (sixty dead). The latter event is known as the second Tyre disaster because near that place, a year earlier, shortly after the IDF invasion of Lebanon, the building that housed the Israeli military government in southern Lebanon blew up (91 dead). The Israeli defense establishment explained the event as the result of a gas leak. But this implausible explanation and rumors that contradicted it raised the need for an official commission, which was indeed established to investigate the event. The conclusion, though somewhat hesitant, stated that it was a regrettable accident due to negligent logistics. Over time there were increased indications that it was a terrorist attack, but Israel maintained its original claim in a desperate effort to preserve its sullied honor.

There was another reason for the difficulty in admitting the alternative explanation: at that time the experts — and even more so the public at large — had no idea what suicide terrorism was and did not even entertain the hypothesis that such a thing was possible. Today it is clear that the first Tyre disaster, in November 1982, almost a year before the official birthday of suicide terrorism, was when it came into being.

The following findings show that the first Tyre disaster was the initial instance of suicide terrorism: (1) three reliable, independent sources saw a loaded Peugeot speed toward the building, break through the gates, stop next to the wall, and explode; (2) the serial number of the motor proved that the automobile was not in use by the Israelis; (3) in the wreckage of the car a severed leg was found that did not belong to any of the bodies of the soldiers who were killed in the explosion. Later more information trickled in, indicating that the attack had indeed been suicide terrorism. The human bomb who drove the car, whose name was Ahmad Qesir, was declared a shahid by Hezbollah. A symbolic funeral was held for him, and later a monument was erected in his memory in his native village near Baalbek. Israeli intelligence learned that the agent who dispatched him was the Hezbollah operations chief, Imad Mughniyah. And, as if there were not enough indications that this was not an accident but rather a terrorist attack, the first anniversary of the event was celebrated by the Islamic resistance movement in southern Lebanon by means of yet another act of suicide terrorism, which sought to repeat the spectacular murderousness of the first one. This time it was not difficult to identify it as such, and it was listed as the fourth suicide attack in the notorious heritage of Hezbollah, which called the first attack the "Haibar Operation." The organization described the terrorist as someone "whose blood heralded the dawn of Islamic martyrdom in our time."

Notwithstanding the above discussion about the first appearance of suicide terrorism, many scholars date it centuries earlier. Most of the publications about suicide terrorism begin by claiming that there is nothing new about the phenomenon, and that its present manifestations are merely an extension of a tradition that began in antiquity, traversed the Middle Ages, and reached the modern age.

Two cases regularly star in the all too often repeated list of historical precedents. The first is the Sicarii, who were active in Judaea/Palestine in the second half of the first century AD. They were the most extreme regional opponents of the Roman Empire, which oppressed the ancient Jews, thwarting their national aspirations for political autonomy and rejecting their demand to hold religious rites in their temple in Jerusalem without the imposition of pagan elements. By assassinating representatives of the foreign military regime, especially Jewish notables of the moderate, allegedly nonpatriotic camp, the Sicarii provoked increased political and religious oppression at the hand of the Romans and inner conflicts among the factions in Judaea. Thus they triggered futile revolt against the Roman legions and civil war. The result was catastrophic: devastation and exile, recorded in traumatic Jewish memory as the destruction of the Second Temple.

The second case is the Assassins (Khashashin) from the Nizari sect of the Ismaili Shiites, who murdered Sunni Muslim rulers and notables, especially representatives of the Turkish Seljuk Empire, as well as European crusaders, in regions of what is now Syria and Iran, from the end of the eleventh to the end of the thirteenth century. Their mission was to rid Islam of the infidels and heretics who deviated from orthodoxy. They gathered in isolated garrison communities in the mountains, a kind of federation of small city-states (the best known among them was the Alamut fortress), and from there they would make sorties to the urban administrative centers where they established secret cells and were assisted by collaborators among the ruling establishment. In the end they were defeated by Arab and Mongol armies.

These classic cases have a common denominator reminiscent of several central characteristics of suicide terrorism. First of all, they are striking examples of religious zealotry. They are marked by an esoteric theology that entailed a messianic doctrine, and they also possessed cultic characteristics expressed in a very demanding ritual system. The Sicarii, who believed that after the catastrophe, complete redemption was assured, were trying to bring on the end-time. They acted in the vicinity of the temple, during pilgrimages, and on the Sabbath, and their targets were chosen from the priesthood. The Assassins' act of killing had a sacramental quality, and their project was driven by millenarian impulse and a promise of imminent paradise. They also committed their murders on festival days and in and around palaces. Both cases were a mixture of a secret religious order and a violent, subversive band. They were surrounded by a romantic aura of heroic mystery, which was nourished by uncertainty regarding the historical details. Both cases have been a focus of fierce controversy. To this day, opinions in the respective local cultures are polarized. Some (usually among the militants) see them as models for imitation, while the more moderate (usually the majority) regard them as bizarre, not to say outrageous and revolting, criminals.

Another important feature found in the two historical cases is highly relevant to suicide terrorism — the aggressor acted with cunning and a degree of treachery. He disguised himself and deceivingly mingled with his target group, until he attained intimate closeness with his intended victim, which was when, very efficiently, he committed the deed. Josephus, who is in fact almost the sole historiographical source regarding the Sicarii, states that they used to behave like ordinary citizens in the narrow alleys of the markets of Jerusalem, while hiding a short dagger ( sica) under the folds of their cloaks. The sources on the Assassins, which are also biased, tell how they penetrated into the deepest recesses of their intended victims' strongholds in the guise of servants and janitors or, ironically, as bodyguards. In time, after they had acquired the full trust of the rulers, at the proper moment, when the man in power was defenseless, they would draw their daggers and strike. According to one tradition, the Assassins were contemptuous of killing at a distance or indirectly, as by shooting an arrow or by poison, and they used to remain at the scene of the murder until they were discovered by the followers of their victims, who killed them on the spot. Later folklore that developed around this medieval tradition makes an interesting claim: that the Assassins' challenge was not only operational — how to approach the target — but also psychological — how to overcome the inhibitions deriving from the sympathy that might develop between the attacker and his victim after they had spent time in each other's company.

These historical cases can be defined by a term used by contemporary researchers: a "zero range" violent attack. Zero range is also a necessary but insufficient condition for the definition of suicide terrorism. Some researchers call such historical cases "high-risk" violent attacks, or by another term: "no-escape" violent attack. Suicide terrorism also fits the latter definitions, but they are not exhaustive.

There are several other, more recent, historical analogies of zero-range or no-escape terrorism. These ostensible precedents, like the earlier classical examples, are spectacular. First was the socialist Narodnaya Volya, which was active in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Its activities climaxed in the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Its members were usually caught because of the short range of their guns and flaws in their explosives, and they were sentenced to death. Second were Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II, who crashed their planes into US ships and sank them. Finally, there were the young Iranian basiji, the so-called Key Boys, who, exposed and enthusiastic, raced into Iraqi minefields in the Shatt al-Arab War of 1980–88. Hoping that, after their death, the gates of paradise would be open for them, they cleared the way for elite troops to advance and attack without obstacles.

Actually none of the above examples from the distant and recent past are instances of suicide terrorism in the sense that this book focuses on it. Some are political assassinations, with a personal, defined, and eminent target, as with the Sicarii, the Assassins, and the Narodnaya Volya. Others are not acts of violence against citizens in the rear, but against soldiers at the front in a declared war, which is the case of the kamikaze, who were actually soldiers, or perhaps a unique variant of airborne guerrillas. As for the Shiite Key Boys, they, too, were not actually citizens, and their aggression was only indirect and not aimed at citizens.

Even if the cases mentioned above partake of terrorism, it is face-to-face terrorism and, as a result, high-risk terrorism, and sometimes even no-escape terrorism. However, there is still no reason to accept the prevalent tendency to use concepts such as close-range, very dangerous terrorism as a synonym for suicide terrorism. For none of the previous cases necessitates the death of the attacker, though they all usually do entail a high probability of the attacker's being killed in action. The distinction between extremely risky terrorism and suicide terrorism is often overlooked. Thus most known historical instances of terrorism are wrongly taken to be suicide terrorism.

During the intifada, the counterterrorism agencies in Israel drew a distinction between suicide terrorism and what they called "sacrificial attacks." At that time they noted that the profile of the suicide terrorist was different from that of the sacrificial attacker. Among other things, the latter were of a far more autonomous, assertive, and active personality type than the former. The erroneous tendency to identify terrorism at point-blank range, high-risk terrorism, and terrorism with no escape as suicide terrorism is taken ad absurdum in the frequently heard argument that, in fact, "it is difficult to think of terrorist movements that have not engaged in suicide missions." Some scholars even maintain that anyone who chooses to commit a terrorist attack against a well-defended target, especially if he knows in advance that the target collective will try him and sentence him to death, is in fact a suicide terrorist. In contrast to these claims, I argue that suicide terrorism is significantly different from other kinds of terrorism. It is a unique, contemporary, and unprecedented phenomenon.

Most of the cases discussed above resemble suicide terrorism in their enormous deadly effect, which is based on the attacker's ability to choose and switch his target in real time, to get extremely close to the target, and to control the timing of the attack, on the one hand, and in their freedom from the need to maximize the attacker's chances of coming out alive, on the other hand. (Incidentally, this kind of terrorism also has conspicuous disadvantages.) The similarity between suicide terrorism and the examples to which it is compared brings out the features that distinguish them, which might otherwise escape our attention. Seeing suicide terrorism as sui generis, and emphasis on the difference between it and rather similar types of terrorism, opens up questions that have not been discussed heretofore, such as that of the connection between the attacker and his or her victim.

Vive la Petite Différence

Unlike the comparable cases mentioned above, suicide terrorism has five unique characteristics:

First, the death of the attacker has an intrinsic importance, and must not be conceived only as a tactical necessity, an operative means, but as an objective, having a value in and of itself.

Second, the attacker's death is certain, and is acknowledged as such from the outset.

Third, the attacker's death is caused by himself and is of his own free will. The attacker must be the agent of his own death — he must actively kill himself rather than being killed by the other side in reaction or by his dispatchers.

Fourth, the attacker dies simultaneously with his victims after being with them in the same place for some time.

Fifth, there must be a principled (and accounted for) mutual dependence between the attacker's and the victims' death.

Only in the case of suicide terrorism is the death of the terrorist assured and decreed in advance; it is known to himself, to his handlers, and, in a vague and peculiar sense, perhaps to his potential victims as well. In all the kinds of terrorism mentioned above, it was likely that the operation would end with the death of the terrorist, but, at least hypothetically, that might not happen. Both in the case of the Assassins and the Key Boys, even if the chance that the attacker might survive was infinitesimal, it was still a possibility.

There is an essential and critical difference between a possibility estimated in advance to be very small and a probability of absolute zero. It is the difference between open-endedness, though the uncertainty is negligible, and an ending that is hermetically sealed, the difference between a future with some degree of mystery and doubt, and a future predictable in all its most minute details. This is also the difference between a modicum of hope, perhaps illusory, and the absence of any optimism, giving up life without a struggle, indeed, making an active initiative to part with it. This is why the suicide terrorist is naturally linked with a culture of death. Decisive empirical evidence of the suicide terrorist's certainty of death is the holding of a funeral with rites of bereavement before the attack is actually launched. Furthermore, the recording of a testament as the ceremonial initiation of the mission, which assures the terrorist's desired death, is a substantial element in suicide terrorism.

In terms of the prospect theory, in all the analogous types of terrorism mentioned above the attacker's death is a matter of probability, which might be very high, whereas the death of the suicide terrorist is a certainty. From the psychological and sociological point of view, the difference between 99.9 percent and 100 percent is a quantum leap. Probability and certainty are entirely different frames of mind, and, with the transition from one to the other, an essential change occurs in the definition of the situation.

Two notorious instances of terrorism in the Middle East are the murder of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981 by Khalid Islambouli, and the murder of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir in 1995. These were high-risk, zero-range terrorist attacks, but by no means were they acts of suicide terrorism, and not because, in both cases, the murderer survived the attack. The latter outcome was a matter of luck (and the failure of the VIP's bodyguards to act quickly enough to prevent the attack). Had the Muslim Islambouli or the Jewish Amir been killed in action, their death would not have made their attack suicidal.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501724754
• ISBN 13: 9781501724756
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 376