Monday January 3, 2005

Column

We now know that it has all been a lie. We've been duped. More precisely, we've duped ourselves. We've searched for greater meaning when there is no greater meaning. We've reached for ethical actions when ethics are not involved. We've tried to soothe our own consciences, when our own consciences have nothing to do with it. It's not about us. It's about them.

We are the victims. They are the suicide bombers.

Evidence of the lie struck hard. Here it is. The suicide bomber who blew himself up in the US mess tent at Frontward Camp in Iraq was a 20-year old medical student from Saudi Arabia. Not a kid. Not economically starved. Not an Iraqi.

Too often we have tried to explain away the reasons for terror. Analysts and apologists alike have attempted to explain how acts of terror are educationally, socially and/or economically based. If they only had food, they would not kill. If they had jobs they would have no need to blow themselves to smithereens. If there were hope they would not become mass murderers. If they had hope...

Well, the reality proves these arguments false. This incident in Iraq is just the most recent example of the absurdity of our own Western justifications for acts so perverse and so far from anything we could ever imagine doing to ourselves or to others. In our need to quickly and cleanly explain why suicide bombers do what they do we found it necessary to conjure up easy provocations for unspeakable acts. But by doing so, we miss the greater point.

In using Western thinking and morality to explain the reasoning behind suicide bombings (we can never hope to understand and we must not, cannot, ever justify, so we settle for an explanation) we miss the essential lesson the bombers are forcing literally in our faces. And we show a total misunderstanding of the enemy.

When a young woman blows herself up in downtown Jerusalem killing and maiming innocents, it is essential understand "why" she would stoop to such inhuman behavior.

When we find out that she is trained as an EMT (an emergency medical technician), charged with the responsibility of saving lives not murdering them, her action and our search for "why" take on new meaning.

When a young woman goes into a cafe on a Sabbath morning in Haifa and blows herself up, murdering children, parents and grandparents, three generations of a single family, the tragedy is enormous.

When we discover that she is a law student, committed to upholding the law we must try to seek deeper understanding of her actions.

When a bus coming from the Western Wall blows up in Jerusalem strewing bodies and spattering body parts over streets and onto buildings we are horrified.

When it turns out that the bomber is not only a teacher but the holder of a master's degree, that he is not only in his 30's but also the father of two young children we are mystified and we search for significance beyond the lack of hope. This was a man whose job it was to instill the hope for a future to his students and to build a future for his children.

When an early morning bus carrying laughing children to school and weary adults to work explodes in Jerusalem families are destroyed and the news makes headlines.

When we discover that the bomber was a graduate student in religious philosophy at a university in the West Bank we must stretch beyond the big lie to understand the motivations of the bombers.

The list goes on.

Education, status, wealth, socio-economic class, profession, family, they have almost nothing to do with the reasons for why a suicide bomber attacks. It's not about hope and it's not about despair.

Suicide bombers think that by murdering innocent civilians they will strike at the heart of their enemy and win the end game.
Suicide bombers are convinced that by committing suicide along with the murders they will become martyrs for their cause.
Suicide bombers believe that Allah wishes them to achieve a greater and loftier goal and that the deaths of these people is an essential step towards attaining that goal.
That's why suicide bombers attack.

And that goes a long way in explaining why so many innocent Muslims are also targets. Because in the warped, crazy, religiously-morphed minds of the murderers there is an understanding that innocent lives are a small price to pay for their own salvation.

In committing the act of suicide bombing, the terrorist is fulfilling his own destiny and achieving Allah's will. We, the victims, are incidental.