Author: Alan Dershowitz
Publication: www.jewishworldreview.com
Date: May 24, 2004
URL: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0504/dershowitz_oppression_causes_suicide_bombings.php3
Dispelling one of the most-repeated
myths with hard, cold facts As suicide bombings increase in Iraq, in Saudi
Arabia, and in Israel, more and more people have come to believe that this
tactic is a result of desperation. They see a direct link between oppression,
occupation, poverty, and humiliation on the one hand, and a willingness
to blow oneself up for the cause on the other hand. It follows from this
premise that the obvious remedy for suicide bombing is to address its root
cause â?" namely, our oppression of the terrorists. As suicide bombings
increase in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, and in Israel, more and more people
have come to believe that this tactic is a result of desperation. They
see a direct link between oppression, occupation, poverty, and humiliation
on the one hand, and a willingness to blow oneself up for the cause on
the other hand. It follows from this premise that the obvious remedy for
suicide bombing is to address its root cause â?" namely, our oppression
of the terrorists. But the underlying premise is demonstrably false: There
is no such link as a matter of fact or history. Suicide bombing is a tactic
that is selected by privileged, educated, and wealthy elitists because
it has proven successful.
Moreover, even some of the suicide
bombers themselves defy the stereotype of the impoverished victims of occupation
driven to desperate measures by American or Israeli oppression. Remember
the 9/11 bombers, several of whom were university students and none of
whom were oppressed by the US. They were dispatched by a Saudi millionaire
named Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden has now become the hero
of many other upper-class Saudis who are volunteering to become shahids
(martyrs) in Iraq, Israel, and other parts of the globe.
Majid al-Enezi, a Saudi student
training to become a computer technician, recently changed career plans
and decided to become a martyr; he crossed over into Iraq, where he died.
His brother Abdullah celebrated that decision. "People are calling all
the time to congratulate us, crying from happiness and envy. There are
many young men who wish they could cross over into Iraq, but they can't.
Thank G-d he was able to."
These rich kids glorify the culture
of suicide, even in distant places. As Tufful al-Oqbi, a student at the
elite King Saud University, described this situation, young people are
wearing T-shirts with bin Laden's picture on them just the way people used
to wear pictures of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary. According to
a recent news account, wealthy women students sport Osama bin Laden T-shirts
under their enveloping abayas to show their approval for his calls to resist
the United States.
Why do these overprivileged and
well-educated young men and women support this culture of death, while
impoverished and oppressed Tibetans continue to celebrate life despite
their occupation by China for half a century?
Why have other oppressed people
throughout history not resorted to suicide bombings and terrorism? The
answer lies in differences among the elite leadership of various groups
and causes. The leaders of Islamic radical causes, especially the Wahhabis,
advocate and incite suicide terrorism, while the leaders of other causes
advocate different means.
Recall Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr., whose people were truly oppressed but who advocated non-violent
means of resistance. It is the leaders who send suicide bombers to blow
themselves up. No suicide bomber ever sent himself to be blown up.
The bombers accept death because
they have been incited into a frenzy of hatred by imams preaching "Kill
the infidels." Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, the leading Islamic scholar
at the elite Al-Azhar University in Cairo (which is not occupied), has
declared that martyrdom operations â?" which means suicide bombings
â?" are the highest form of jihad and an Islamic commandment.
Even more mainstream role models,
such as Yasser Arafat's wife, who lives in a multimillion-dollar residence
in Paris, has said that if she had a son, she would want him to become
a suicide bomber because there is no greater honor than to become a martyr.
Young children, some as young as
12 and 13, are incited and seduced into strapping bombs around themselves
by these older and better-educated elitist leaders. The children are promised
virgins in heaven, praise and money for their families here on Earth, and
posters portraying them as rock stars. It is an irresistible combination
for some, and the blame lies squarely at the feet of the elitists who exploit
them, use them, and eventually kill them.
There is absolutely no evidence
to support the claim of a direct relationship between occupation and suicide
bombing. If anything, occupation makes it more difficult to launch successful
terrorist attacks. This is not to argue for occupation; it is to separate
the arguments regarding occupation from the claim that it is the fact of
occupation, and the oppression it brings, that causes suicide bombing.
Indeed, were Israel to end its occupation
of Gaza and most of the West Bank (as I have long believed it should),
it is likely that terrorism would actually increase as terrorist commanders
secure more freedom to plan and implement terrorist actions. The same might
well be true in Iraq, were the United States to pick up and run.
The time has come to address the
real root cause of suicide bombing: elitist incitement by certain religious
and political leaders who are creating a culture of death and exploiting
the ambiguous teachings of an important religion.
Abu Hamza â?" the cleric who
tutored Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber â?" recently urged
a large crowd to embrace death. Islamic young people are in love with death,
claim some influential imams; but it is these leaders who are arranging
the marriages between the children and the bomb belts.
Perhaps, now that suicide bombers
have attacked Saudi Arabia, responsible Islamic leaders will better understand
that it is their people who will be the ultimate victims of this tactically
imposed culture of death.
