Yesterday the military wing of the Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, claimed responsibility for Friday night's bombing outside a Tel Aviv discotheque, which took the lives of 20 young Israelis. The suicide bomber was identified as 22-year-old Saeed Hotary, a Jordanian who had been living in Kalkilya.

"I am very happy and proud of what my son did and I hope all the men of Palestine and Jordan would do the same,'' Saeed's father Hassan told The Associated Press.

Family members could not supply information about Saeed's political affiliations. His brother said Saeed "was very religious since he was young; he prayed and fasted."

The typical suicide bomber
Since the signing of the Oslo Agreements in 1993, Palestinian terrorist organizations have sent more than 70 suicide bombers on missions against Israeli targets. Fortunately, not all succeeded in their missions like Hotary. Last month Yediot Aharonot presented a profile of the typical suicide bomber:

	47% of the suicide bombers have an academic education and an additional 29% have at least a high school education.
	83% of the suicide bombers are single.
	64% of the suicide bombers are between the ages 18-23; most of the rest are under 30.
	68% of the suicide bombers have come from the Gaza Strip.

In a column published today in the New York Times, William Safire writes that "the pride and joy of Arafat's arsenal is a weapon of mass terror that has no known defense: the human missile." Safire describes the suicide bombers as being 'brainwashed' and considers the efforts necessary to enable the launching of these 'missiles.'

"[Arafat] knows where the human missiles are being programmed and armed. Such fanatic indoctrination takes time and isolation; it takes teachers of terror skilled in evoking visions of a martyrdom and requires recruits from vulnerably infuriated families who are known to other cells. The brainwashing is reinforced with official broadcasts of films of a dead boy beckoning potential suicide killers to join him in paradise."
From the New York Times, June 4, 2001

In a report on MSNBC following the suicide bombing attack in Netanya last month, unnamed sources from Hamas admitted that suicide bombers undergo a process of indoctrination that lasts for months.

"The bombers believe they are sent on their missions by God, and by the time they're ready to be strapped with explosives, say the sources, they have reached a hypnotic state. Their rationale: that by blowing themselves up in a crowd of Israelis, they are forging their own gateway to heaven."
From MSNBC

The BBC reported that suicide bombers "are likely to be motivated by religious fervor." According to a BBC report, recruits are "picked out from mosques, schools and religious institutions. They are likely to have shown particular dedication to the principles of Islam… and are taught the rewards that will await them if they sacrifice their lives."

Islam reserves places in paradise
According to Islamic tradition, "he who gives his life for an Islamic cause will have his sins forgiven and a place reserved in paradise."

But Christine Huda Dodge, About's Guide to Islam, insists that suicide is forbidden in Islam. Though "fighting oppression is commendable," Dodge points out that "harming innocent bystanders, even in times of war, was forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad."

Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al Sheik, the supreme religious leader of Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa (religious edict) in April that equated suicide bombings with suicide, which therefore is not allowed in Islam.

In response, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a leading doctrinal authority in the Sunni Muslim world, wrote in Egypt's Al Ahram that "if a person blows himself up, as in operations that Palestinian youths carry out against those they are fighting, then he is a martyr. But if he explodes himself among babies or women or old people who are not fighting the war, then he is not considered a martyr."

The bottom line is not entirely clear among Islamic clerics. Sheik Yousef al Qaradawi, a moderate Egyptian cleric told the Qatari newspaper Al Raya in April, "They are not suicide operations. These are heroic martyrdom operations, and the heroes who carry them out don't embark on this action out of hopelessness and despair but are driven by an overwhelming desire to cast terror and fear into the hearts of the oppressors."

Combination of occupation and humiliation
Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American Research Center in Ramallah, claims, "Religious or ideological fervor appears to offer only a partial explanation." Rabbani says "Palestinian suicide bombers are neither products of a passive and unquestioning obedience to political authority nor pressed into service against their will."

Instead, Rabbani states that the common thread among all suicide bombers is the "bitter experience of what they see as Israeli state terror."

"Without exception, the suicide bombers have lived their lives on the receiving end of a system designed to trample their rights and crush every hope of a brighter future… Confronted by a seemingly endless combination of death, destruction, restriction, harassment and humiliation, they conclude that ending life as a bomb - rather than having it ended by a bullet - endows them, even if only in their final moments, with a semblance of purpose and control previously considered out of reach."
From Middle East News Online

Palestinians support suicide bombings
An unnamed Palestinian security official cited in today's Jerusalem Post said, "One of the problems in stopping [suicide bombing] attacks is the strong support for them among the population."

According to a poll conducted among Palestinian adults from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including East Jerusalem at the end of May by Dr. Nabil Kukali and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), "a substantial majority (76.1%) support suicidal attacks like that of Netanya [in May], whereas 12.5% oppose, and 11.4% express no opinion."

Palestinian psychiatrist Iyad Al-Sarraj, cited in a recent Reuters report entitled "Palestinians find ready supply of suicide bombers," said both religion and the humiliation of life under occupation were the key motives for suicide bombers bent on starting a better life in paradise.

"It is no wonder that some people are doing it. We should wonder why everyone isn't doing it," Sarraj said.

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