Reemergence of the "Suicide Bomber"

Soon, as Israel hesitates in its codified pattern of surrender to "Palestine," the Arab suicide bomber will reemerge. Yet, for all his alleged courage, the "suicide bomber" will always be a coward. Wanting the world to believe that he is willing to suffer death for his cause, it is actually an overriding fear of death that will again occasion his ecstatic murder of old women and young children.

The suicide bomber's fiery part in the terrorist drama is expected to bring him immortality amidst seventy-two virgins and rivers of honey. There is, therefore, nothing remotely heroic about his shared self-immolation. This suicide bomber who sees incomparable personal benefit in killing Jews does not really commit suicide. He commits only murder.

For the Palestinian terrorist who now plans to blow himself up in a "military operation," personal death - not "stolen land" - is the true source of injustice. For him, the conquest of personal death - followed by victory over Israel - is the ultimate form of power. Hence, there can be no more just and powerful course of action for the suicide bomber than one that kills the despised Jew (now caricatured daily by the Arab press in the crudest anti-Semitic stereotypes) while simultaneously ensuring life everlasting.

What should Israel under Barak's capitulation process learn from this paradox of the Palestinian suicide bomber? The essential lesson here is simple: Recognize that the terrorist is not fearless, but craven and cowardly. Understand that he is so overwhelmingly afraid, so utterly immobilized by existential dread, that he will do anything, including the murder of Jewish infants and children, to stay alive himself. For the Palestinian terrorist the prospect of authentic self-sacrifice is altogether beyond his comprehension. Were he to believe that his "suicide" were really a path to personal extinction and disappearance he would resist, frantically and with every fiber of his being, the community call to "martyrdom."

The suicide bomber is fully convinced that in destroying Jews (it is always Jews, not Israelis) he can prevent his own personal death. Killing Jews, no matter how unarmed and defenseless, no matter how young or old, offers him an unparalleled feeling of power and relief. The insufferable death fear of his fragile ego is lessened by the sacrifice of the infidel Jew. It is through the bombing and burning of Jewish noncombatants that this terrorist chooses to buy himself free from the impotence of one who must die.

For Israel there is little point in deterring prospective suicide bombers with threats of retaliatory destruction. Instead, to deter the suicide bomber, Israel should now offer the would-be terrorist murderer of Jews the compelling threat of a genuine suicide. This means convincing the Palestinian terrorist (Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad - it makes no difference ) that his explosion of Jewish bodies will propel him not into Paradise, but into the eternal darkness, into fire, into ice.

What more must Israel do? Violence and the sacred are inseparable in the Islamic Middle East, but Israel must now think in terms of desacrilizing the suicide bomber, of convincing him that his homicidal path is not sacred. Can this desacrilization be accomplished by Israeli politicians? Certainly not. It would have to originate with Islamic holy men themselves, and they are hardly apt to help Israel in this fashion.

Should Israel's security services target and kill terrorist leaders? For what purpose? The terrorist threat now facing Israel resembles the problem of the mythic Hydra, a monster of many heads which was difficult to kill because every time one head was struck, by Hercules, two new ones arose in its place. No, there are far too many terrorists to assassinate. To be truly effective, assassination would have to become genocidal.

Where are Israel's serious thinkers? Certainly they are not in the Barak Government, in the opposition parties, or in the universities. Today. Israel is a land where serious thought has largely become an oxymoron. Prominent Israelis are often more interested in transforming the Jewish State into a Middle Eastern Los Angeles than in fighting a dedicated enemy. In this connection, one does need to admire Israel's Islamic adversaries in at least one important respect. Unlike a great number of Israelis, these enemies of Israel do believe in something more than in becoming a counterfeit America. With this more substantial belief in their faith they are at an enormous political and military advantage.

To survive into the future, Israel needs both authentic thinkers and an authentic faith in its Jewish foundations. For the first it will likely have to look elsewhere, outside the State of Israel, within real universities and intellectual centers. For the second it will have to look inside the State, and to a three-thousand year history and responsibility that is now largely forgotten.

The suicide bomber will reemerge shortly. From Rabin to Barak, Israel's leadership has ensured such reemergence. To resist, Israel will have to discover its pertinent thinkers and its essential faith very soon.

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