"Smarter
Bombs": Understanding The World of Women Palestinian Bombers
by Anat Berko
Reviewed by IPT News
Abigail R. Esman
August 30, 2018
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There was Muneira, who planned to blow herself up at a hospital near Tel
Aviv. There was Jemilla, who escorted a young boy to his suicide bombing at
a market; he was excited he soon would be meeting girls in Paradise. And
there was Sabiha, who prepared explosives and trained other women to do the
same.
With courage and compassion, Anat
Berko, a criminologist and member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee of Israel's Knesset, interviewed them all.
Their stories, and the insights they provide into the motives and lives
of female suicide bombers, fill the pages of The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers,
newly released in paperback. Though first published in 2012, the release of
a new edition underscores the difficult, ongoing challenges suicide bombers
pose, and the continued efforts to understand the relatively new phenomenon
of women suicide bombers and the role of women in violent jihad.
To read more about Anat Berko's research, click here for an interview with her recently conducted
by Abigail R. Esman.
Berko spent 15 years visiting Palestinian women in Israeli jails,
gradually developing relationships that, if they could not be described as
"friendships," were built on mutual trust and an unexpected
respect. What she found, and what her readers discover through her, are
women who seem never to have fully understood the weight of their own
actions, puzzlingly detached from the reality of the murders they took part
in – or had hoped to. She asked a woman she calls "Ayisha," for
instance, if she "felt anything for her potential Israeli
victims."
"I saw the blood of Palestinians and I didn't' think about my
mother or my family," Ayisha replied, "so how could I think about
Israelis I didn't know?"
Rather, Berko describes women far more concerned about themselves.
"Rania," for instance, complains that newspaper accounts had
referred to her as being nine months pregnant at the time of her attack,
when she was actually in her third month. She feared people would condemn
her for trying to kill her own child. Others speak frequently of fearing
their husbands will take another wife before they are released.
Through her dedication to the issues and her genuine compassion for
these women, Berko not only earned their trust; in writing of them, she
humanizes them to the reader in the same way she seems to humanize Israelis
and Jews to them. Hence we learn that not all of these women are in prison
because they genuinely wished to kill Israelis; some rather saw prison as a
preferable alternative to the oppressive and violent homes they were forced
to share with their abusive husbands or fathers. Some, as Daniel Pipes
observes in his Foreword, "pretend to attack Israelis so as to go to
jail and leave their miserable home lives," or to "escape sexual
dishonor through violence." They may wave a knife in the face of an
Israeli soldier, and in some cases, return to prison as quickly as they can
once they are released.
Berko also explores the stories of child would-be bombers, who – unlike
most of the women – are recruited, often through deceit, and almost always
with promises of a Paradise filled with virgins who await their swift
arrival. Some also seek to emulate their fathers: "Qatada's" father,
for instance, had served time in Israeli jails for attacking soldiers, and
Qatada, 18 when Berko met him in prison, had been arrested for throwing
stones at Israeli military. And others, like the women, seem to relate
terrorism with violence at home: one told Berko that he "chose
terrorism in revenge and to rebel against his parents."
Similarly, there are also those who see terrorism as a confirmation of
their manhood, whose machismo is intricately tied with the notion that
violence breeds respect – the same respect they sought from their own
fathers. (Not incidentally, psychiatrist James
Gilligan, who studies violent criminals in American jails, has found
the same viewpoint among that population, as well.) "Fawaz," for
instance, who was 15 when he was stopped, wearing an explosive belt on an
Israeli bus, told Berko, "I had my picture taken with a gun and a
Koran, and I felt I was a man and not weak; I felt I had power.... I felt
brave and not afraid of anything."
In writing The Smarter Bomb, Berko set out to answer specific
questions: "Can a woman be 'good' according to the criteria of
Palestinian society, and a terrorist at the same time? Is the involvement
in terrorism a sign of Palestinian women's liberation, or is it another way
of oppressing? Who are they, the Palestinian women who dared to leave their
homes (in most cases without their fathers' permission), what made them and
Palestinian children join the terrorist machine? Can the human bombs of
Islamic terrorism be stopped, and if so, how?"
By presenting the material as raw statement, largely uninterrupted by
any interpretations of her own, Berko allows her readers to find those
answers themselves, to draw their own parallels and discover any patterns –
or lack of them – among these terrorists, who represent the most vulnerable
members of Palestinian society.
But her studies have far wider significance, as she observes,
"Suicide bombing terrorism is becoming refined, and it is
contagious." Since the book first appeared in 2012, suicide attacks
have killed dozens of men, women and children in Paris, Manchester,
Brussels, and Istanbul. And non-suicide terrorism has murdered even more –
including the shootings in San Bernardino, largely orchestrated by a
woman, Tashfeen Malik.
Berko's work may be compassionate, but it is not about compassion.
Rather, it is about understanding who these women and children are. It is
about discovering what makes them seek solace through violence and death,
so that we may potentially find a way to save them – and in so doing, save
ourselves.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
Related Topics: , The
Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers, Anat
Berko, suicide
bombers, women
terrorists, child
terrorists, Knesset,
James
Gilligan, terrorist
motivations, San
Bernardino attack, Tashfeen
Malik
Interview
with "Smarter Bombs" Author Anat Berko
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
August 30, 2018
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Anat Berko began her career researching the phenomenon of suicide
terrorism while still fulfilling her military career in Israel – a career
that saw her rise to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The daughter of Iraqi
Jews who escaped to Israel as refugees, she since has become one of the
foremost experts on the subject, advising NATO, the U.S. State Department,
the FBI, Israel's National Security Council, and others. As a result of her
remarkable work, including courageous interviews with would-be terrorists and
women who have aided suicide bombers, President Benjamin Netanyahu invited
her to run on Likkud's ticket. She was elected to the Knesset in 2015.
The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as
Suicide Bombers is her second book, first published in 2012.
She continues to share her knowledge and research through articles,
consulting, and her work with various organizations worldwide.
Note: To read Abigail R. Esman's review of The Smarter Bomb, click here.
Abigail R. Esman: What inspired you to write this book?
Anat Berko: I started before the book, more than 20 years
ago, with research for my dissertation, which was about the moral judgment
of suicide bombers. If you remember in the 1990s there were a lot of
suicide bombing attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – everywhere. It was like
a hurricane of terror. So soon after that, I wrote Path to Paradise, which also
included an interview with the founder of the Hamas organization. They
called him the "spiritual leader," but I am sure that you know he
was not just a spiritual leader – there is nothing like that, because this
"spiritual leader" caused death and gave justification for murder
and death. That's not spiritual. It's very, very physical.
And so after that I decided to deal with women and children because I
felt that the next wave would be women. It had started already, but it was
not yet a deep phenomenon. But I felt that the smarter bomb – the woman is
the smarter bomb, she is more useful as a bomb, as a killer. And as you see
right now, the she-bomber is very useful and very effective.
ARE: You dealt with these women as women, though, not as
terrorists. When you read the book, there's a sense of you having real
compassion for them.
AB: I felt that I must do that, to isolate my feelings and
to be emotionally detached, socially – to use empathy as a tool. I even put
that as a chapter, because to be able to empathize is a
tool, to investigate in such a deep way, and I think because of that I got
all that insight that could be so effective – also to be able to see
forward to the future. And it helped to make the book something useful not
just on the academic level but also for the practitioners. I am both in my
work, so I see how it can be useful with, say, psychological warfare, or
how men and women and youth can blow themselves up and kill in such a way
and have the moral justification from Islamists, how they picture what is
waiting for them in Paradise. For us that is something we cannot understand.
Do they really, really believe they will meet with the virgins, and what
the women are getting there?
To me, the women are victims of their own society, of Palestinian
society, victims and victimizers. The punishment in their own society
pushes them to terrorism. You can see right now the European women who
convert to Islam like Muriel Degauque, with her blond hair and green eyes.
She was the first to do it. And that is much more dangerous because you
cannot have profiling here – so she is much more effective.
Also there is an attitude in crime and security: if I go out with my
husband, everyone will ask at the mall or movie, do you have a weapon? But
no one will ask me. But actually I could have a pistol in my purse. So this
is a way that women are not suspected like men. They don't think of a
pregnant woman who could have a bomb on her stomach, or a weapon and a baby,
like car bombs with babies inside a car –we've seen that in Iraq.
ARE: Was it a problem to go into the prisons?
AB: I got a special permission – that everything is
according to the ethics of conducting research. It was long before I was a
Knesset member. So I applied for permission and there was no politics in
this issue – it was pure research.
But what is interesting is some practical implications from this, not
just the book, but if you read the articles I've written about jihad
tourism, the research you get from the inside world, is so important to
understand. We are in the West – even Israel, we are not in the West but we
can say as people we do not understand the way of thinking and the
rationale for conducting terrorism. As Jews, Christians, with Judeo-Christian
values, they can use women and children, you see it on Gaza Strip and
elsewhere, like Lebanon. Everything that started with Israel never stopped
in Israel. So you can learn a lot from what is going on inside Israel.
ARE: Do you feel that Palestinian women are motivated to
commit terrorist acts for reasons that have nothing specifically to do with
Israel?
AB: Sure. Even one told me to be a shaheed, a
suicide killer, it is a good solution to problems. And for women,
everything related to so-called moral problems, things related to wedlock
relations, even just suspicion of having an affair, instead of being killed
– I don't like this term but they call it "honor killings" – they
have the idea not to humiliate the family but to give respect and honor, to
be a shaheed and give respect in this way. One journalist
I spoke with said they call them in Arabic "shamuta" –
whore. It is better to be a shaheed than a shamuta.
ARE: That's the sense I had from the book. Palestinian men
want to kill Israelis; but from reading the book I have the feeling that
it's not true for the women.
AB: Yes. For men it is ideology. For the women it is to
solve a problem. Or for the men they think their sexual experience will be
in Paradise. This is also solving a problem. For a society when they
suppress sexuality, everything is shame, and it's shame and guilt and
especially around sexuality, so they cannot behave in a free way, and when
we're thinking about the youth in terrorism, the description is that
everything that is forbidden in this world is allowed in Paradise. They
want to have beer. Sex. For women the virginity that is necessary in the
real world is not in Paradise.
On the one hand, they hate the West, but the dream is to live like the
West in Paradise.
ARE: On a wider scale: do you feel like we are making
progress?
AB: (sighs loudly): Progress in
counterterrorism?
I think that the world understands much more right now, but I feel like
– not really. Because you cannot appease those terrorists or the people who
support those terrorists. I think we need to put this PC aside, and look at
reality as we used to look without PC. Some people use propaganda against
you, just say that. You don't need to hide that. It's very important to
know and to put everything on the table. Without recognizing it, you cannot
defend against it. And you also have cyber terrorism, like social media,
which helps them to operate and coordinate and it's very difficult to
combat it but we need to do it, and we need to demand that the giants of
social media prevent it, to protect innocent people and civilians, who want
to live.
ARE: Specifically for women and children, what can we do?
AB: Not allow polygamy and women trafficking, cheap dowry,
isolating women, because even in the West and in Israel, you find polygamy
– it's forbidden but they use sharia law. And abusing women – let's say
someone has four women and 60 children – nobody understands that this
causes damage to the women and children.
Also to end child marriage. People cover their eyes and say "this
is the culture. Let them do that." No, you cannot let them do that. A
14-year-old girl is a girl; she cannot be a bride. It is not allowed by
your law [in the West] – so please, impose it. To understand what are women
in the family, what are males in the family – how it is different to have a
brother and sister, what are their relations. One thing women told me, in
Paradise she can choose her husband. Can you believe that? Or that if her
husband is an abuser, he will go to hell and she will go to Paradise. These
are what they think.
And this is another distinction: not to look at women as birth-machines
but as women, humans, with dignity, with life, with an ideal to fulfill
themselves.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in
New York and the Netherlands. Follow her at @radicalstates.
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