ByJamie Glazov

Interview with Phyllis Chesler and Others

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19432

In January 2002, a 27-year-old Palestinian woman, Wafa Idris, became the first Palestinian female suicide bomber, blowing herself up on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. A few months ago, in late June 2005, another Palestinian young woman, Wafa al-Bas, followed, like others have, in Idris’ footsteps; in this case, however, she did not succeed. Attempting a suicide bombing of an Israeli hospital inside Israel where she received her medical treatment, she was caught by Israeli security who safely detonated the explosives tied to her undergarments.

In Russia, female Chechen suicide bombers have included women, including those who helped seize a Beslan middle school in September, 2004 and killed over 330 hostages, many of them children. Iran, meanwhile, is running a “suicide column” program in which it is actively recruiting members of the public, many of them women, to become suicide bombers.

What was once a male-dominated form of terror and suicide is now beginning to include a female component. What is the cause of this new phenomenon? Why are Islamic women becoming suicide bombers with increasing frequency? To discuss these and other question related to the She Bomber, we are joined by a distinguished panel today. Our guests are:

Dr. Anat Berko, Lt.Col. (ret.), an advisor to Israel’s Council for National Security, the governmental team dealing with Counter-Terrorism. She serves as an advisor to senior echelon decision makers in efforts to counter suicide bombers and their dispatchers. She is a Research Fellow with the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Inter-Disciplinary Center, Herzliya. She holds a Ph.D. in Criminology from Bar-Ilan University where she wrote her dissertation on “The Moral Infrastructure of Chief Perpetrators of Suicidal Terrorism”. She is the author of The Path to the Garden of Eden -The Inside World of Suicide Bombers, Male and Female, and Their Dispatchers, which is going to be published in English in the USA soon;

Joan Lachkar, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana. She is the author of The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women. She also specializes in the psychology of terror and is the author of “The Psychological Make-Up of a Suicide Bomber in the Journal of Psychohistory(29(4): 349- 367);

Nancy Kobrin, an affiliated professor to the University of Haifa, Arabist, psychoanalyst and author of the upcoming book, The Sheikh’s New Clothes: Islamic Suicide Terror and What It’s Really All About;

and

Phyllis Chesler, the author of 13 books including the forthcoming The Death of Feminism. What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Nov 05) which focuses on Islamic gender apartheid and on Muslim, Arab,and Middle Eastern female psychology, among other topics. She was once held captive in Kabul, Afghanistan and writes about it in this book. She is also the author of Women and Madness which has been updated and is being reissued at the same time;

FP: Anat Berko Joan Lachkar, Nancy Kobrin and Phyllis Chesler, welcome to our panel discussion.

We know, of course, that the phenomenon of the She-Bomber is inter-connected with a pathological misogynist culture in which young women are coerced and forced into suicide bombing through all kinds of violent and horrifying ways. Wafa Idris, for instance, couldn’t bear children and her husband divorced her. Discarded and shunned in a culture that sees a divorced woman who cannot bear children as worthless, she became the obvious target of exploitation for terrorist groups. We also know how many of these poor girls are raped and/or seduced into sex by terrorists and then threatened with being exposed in a culture that only ostracizes, but severely punishes, females who have lost their virginity before marriage. Suicide bombing is presented to them as the only option in which they can save their own — and their family’s — “honor.”

Hopefully we will touch on all of these tragic realities in our discussion today and you, our esteemed panel of experts, can bring much wisdom and understanding to this tragic phenomenon. But before we narrow in on any one specific theme, let’s start with an opening general statement from each of you in terms of what you think this phenomenon represents and what you consider to be its greatest significance.

FP: Dr. Berko?

Dr. Berko: I will begin with an example that demonstrates the situation that Arab women get caught up in when they are pushed into a corner and feel there is no escape and that leads them to become ‘suicide murderers’ – ‘shahidas’.

Nazima (21) – a Palestinian security prisoner in an Israeli jail, as quoted in my book, “The Path to the Garden of Eden”, needed to talk and tell her personal story:

“I did not want to die in a terrorist attack. About three months before the attack, I began training…I was a spoilt child and I hadn’t planned on dying”.

“I didn’t tell my family a thing… my father would have killed me if he knew I was going to military training with the ‘shabab’ (guys)”, I was told by Nazima, the girl who was coerced to become a ‘shahida’ against her will, because she had broken the taboo of associating with boys.

“My family is highly respected; certainly what I did, gained them even more honor.”….

The dispatcher told me that I would be going on a suicide mission ‘istishahad’ (self­sacrifice)… “I began counting the days till my death, because they forced me to. I begged the ‘adult’ who was in charge of the military trainees, to release me from it. He told me ‘Halas ya­binti’ (“Enough my daughter”). I repeated my claim that I am not religious, that I don’t pray, and he replied, ‘when you die, you will be closer to God. God will forgive you and allow you into the Garden of Eden, in spite of not praying.’

When a woman decides or is coerced to commit a suicide attack, she doesn’t ask for permission from her family, knowing, of course, that it will not be given. In this way the social and moral code of the family in Arab society is broken. In fact, the family of the suicide terrorist is marginalized and neutralized of any influence on their daughter who is taken from her family’s authority with no way of return, as we see in the example presented. One of the ‘suicide terrorists’ described her dispatchers thus:” They used me and abused me”.

The Palestinian suicide terrorists who failed to explode regard the situation as another failure (mess up-‘fashla’) in lives of continuous failure and paid, as was said: “…Anyway I will never be of use to anyone … it would be better to explode.”

FP: This is truly heartbreaking and a reality that our mainstream media, including Oprah, refuse to mention when discussing Palestinian female suicide bombers. It appears it has nothing to do with Israeli “oppression” but with the pathological yearning for mass death and suicide that permeates Islamist culture in general and Palestinian society in particular.

Dr. Lachkar?

Lachkar: Thank you Anat, Nancy and Phyllis for welcoming me to this discussion. Without sounding too arrogant, I think the answer is relatively simple.

Women are given no respect by men and encourage their sons to have the same disregard toward women and their mothers. Women in fundamentalist Islam societies have no rights, no vote, and very low self-esteem. Fidelity is expected of the woman but not of the man. She learns to tolerate her pain, her shame in painful silence, and when she does not obey she becomes the receptacle for all the ills of society and is blamed because she is regarded as having an inherently evil nature. One way of granting permission, extending beyond religion

killers were abused by their male handlers. But, failure brings ever-new feelings of self­

FP: There may be commonalities, but let’s keep one thing in mind above all else: in democracies such as Israel, Israeli females choose if they want to be soldiers as a life profession. And in Israeli culture and military ideology, death is to be avoided and not to be sought. In the Palestinian context, females are abused and forced to kill themselves. Death, not life, is the ultimate goal.

Dr. Kobrin?

Kobrin: Thank you Jamie, Anat, Phyllis and Joan. I agree with all that has been said so far with a few quibbles. As an aside, there were a rash of female suicide bombers in the mid­1980s in Lebanon but it definitely has become a more pronounced phenomenon in the past five years. These women seek honor – but it is male honor (sharaf) that they desire and they will never really achieve it because they are bound by female honor – ‘ird which means pelvis. They are quite concretely trapped by their culture’s view of the female body. The women wish for power and freedom from being chronically coerced and manipulated as devalued sex objects from day one of their birth.

Anat notes that the female suicide bomber tries to break out of this unbearable control by not asking permission from the family. It’s a naive declaration of independence but in the end this jailed female suicide bomber notes “I was used and abused.” Scapegoated. Joan points to her buying into blowing herself up in order to receive respect. I would add, that they throw themselves quite literally at their victims because they do not feel themselves to be ‘authentic’, i.e. truly alive. They scream that only they are the true believers. Phyllis emphasizes an important point, that of self-hatred which Anat quoting Nazima telling us about -“I will never be of use to anyone…it would be better to explode.” It is as if we can hear the parental/familial/cultural message Nazima was sent: I am female, I am worthless. I am nothing if I am independent. Scared to death, this female suicide bomber tried to murder in order not to die alone.

Jamie, I don’t think you could have chosen a better title for this symposium – The She Bomber. I couldn’t help but think of the Chechen National Anthem. This foundational song contains many of the elements we are talking about:

“We were born at night, when the she-wolf whelped.
In the morning, as lions howl, we were given our names.

In eagles’ nests, our Mothers nursed us,
To tame a stallion, our Fathers taught us.
We were devoted to our Mothers, to people and the Native land…
…
The East will sooner be breached in boiling sun,
Then we appear before the world; losing our honor.
…
Never will we appear submissive before anyone,
Death or Freedom – we can choose only one way.” (emphasis added)

The she-wolf is the Chechen national symbol and it will sacrifice itself for the pack. (personal communication, M. Gammer). For a female suicide bomber who doesn’t feel very good about herself, religious beliefs, national anthems and other cultural ideologies become a way of organizing the mind by means of these fantasies. The ideologies coupled with external events such as the Russian mistreatment of the Chechens etc. can then be invoked to explain her desperate conviction and the paradoxical effect of destroying herself. (personal communication, M. Logel)

FP: Dr. Berko?

Berko: Thank you, Jamie, Nancy, Phyllis and Joan. The comments you made are parts of a very complex puzzle.

With regard to Joan’s comments, the culture, religion and the social alignment are a predisposition to the phenomenon of ‘suicide murderers’, and according to which many Moslems are educated. Nevertheless, the questions should be asked as to why only a minority of women become ‘suicide murderers.’ For example, in Israel, since 2002, there have been eight female ‘suicide murderers’ as opposed to hundreds of male ‘suicide murderers’ and many others that didn’t choose the road of death. Absolute discipline is demanded in Arab society, both from men and women. Phyllis rightly emphasis that we are dealing with a society in which the collective is significant. This is a society where the individual is erased and completely submerged into the group. Of course, the place of women, is even more inferior and thus, because of all the many prohibitions placed on them, there is the desire for a ‘youth revolt’, discharge of tension, even wearing western dress en route to carrying out the attack.

As regards women in the army, as one who served in the IDF (Israel Defense Force) for 25 years, there is no comparison, since one isn’t dealing with that type of ‘honor‘, even though the army is a totalitarian organization. It is appropriate to deal with the fine points, as Nancy did with the different significances that there are to “honor”, in Arab society. Indeed, the army is still conceived of as a masculine organization that women have difficulty making headway in, yet a military career is something one chooses as a way of life rather than something one is pushed into that has no way out and is the road to death of the suicide terrorists, as Jamie pointed out.

Still, there is a contradiction in the status of the woman in Arab society. On one hand the women are without apparent rights, but on the other hand, the mother image is very significant to her children (sons and daughters). The father, in a patriarchal family, is regarded ambivalently by his children, when he takes an additional wife (usually younger) in the face of their mother. This was raised prominently by Nancy. There are women in the Arab society and then there is the ‘mother’-‘umi’. Nancy emphasized the central position of the mother. By the way, from my research it is true that also among the suicide terrorists and their dispatchers, which whom I met; raising the subject of their mothers in the discussion brings tears to their eyes.

Even when I had the opportunity to ask a female suicide terrorist from the PKK, who was caught in Turkey, what her thoughts were on the way to the suicide attack, she replied: “…of my mother, not my father, just my mother…”.

The Suicide Terrorist often wishing to clear her name, the female suicide terrorist will carry out the mission there by upgrading the status of her family earning them honor and preventing her or their humiliation or even murder. Among women who became suicide bombers, there was always some additional factor, as in the example I gave you, that pushed them to carry out suicide attacks. Female suicide bombers reported chatting with young men from all over the Arab world on the internet, which allows young men and women a sort of contact, often romantic, unsupervised by parents, who aren’t familiar with computers. A female suicide bomber, who had last minute remorse, referred to the young Arab man she corresponded with in the internet chat room as- ‘my lover’ although she had never met him … the terrorists know how to exploit that naiveté.

It seems to me that the question of ‘honor’ was clarified by a female Palestinian prisoner who described the significance of “honor” in Arab society to me by means of a drawing of a pitcher (jara) crossed by a broken line:

“When the pitcher is broken, it will never return to its former state, and if it does return – the fact that it was broken will always be obvious. That is man, that is honor… If a man destroys something by his hand, it is impossible to return it to its former state. If its former state could be returned with God’s help… for the rest of his life it will be clear, that once it had been broken. That’s the way it is with a girl’s honor… one has to guard what is in one’s hands, in order never to have regrets. If I have freedom, honor, I have to protect that freedom, if I break that freedom, it is impossible to repair something that is broken.”

It is sufficient for there to be rumors of a romantic connection out of the norm to seal the fate of a woman. This is because the honor of a man in Arab society is decided according to the honor of the woman who is close to him – mother, wife, sister, daughter etc. So, sometimes, the “wish” to become a “shahida” arises from the need for honor and social recognition instead of humiliation and even murder by a member of the family.

FP: Dr. Lachkar.

Lachkar: Dr. Chelser, Dr. Kobrin, and the rest of my colleagues, I think we are all right. Aggression has many faces and goes in many directions, toward the self, against the self, against the other, etc. There are many variations such as “freedom fighters,” those who will do anything for ‘the cause,” a form of pathological narcissism and grandiosity to support a sense of nationalistic pride. Then there are those who must prove their worthiness through self-punishment, masochism, self-sacrifice, victimization. There is not one rational that motivates female suicide bombers. Overall, we are in agreement, for someone like Nazima who was spoiled, may use her aggression as rebellion, to fight for “the cause” (maybe a form of projective identification to ward off her father’s abuse of mothe). Or it could be that she felt worthless, life didn’t mean anything so she blows herself up.

I agree with Dr. Kobrin that seeking male “honor” is like a male activity, a sport. One might speculate that because men are relatively absent in Islamic societies (basically raised by mothers), one way to bond is to “become” father” (goes beyond “identifying” with father). In terms of why only a select view of She Bombers are female, one might liken it to supermodels, human rights advocates or women’s liberation groups. It only takes a few to

(2) Why is it that it takes a panel like this to have these realities discussed? Everywhere one looks the truth of these matters is never mentioned. Everywhere in the media where journalists pretend they are being brave and courageous in discussing this topic, all you hear is how terrible the Israelis are and how the suicide bombers, male and female alike, are responding to the “humiliation” suffered under supposed Israeli “oppression” etc. What gives? Where are the leftist feminists who should be enraged about these realities?

Chesler: First, let me respond to what my esteemed colleagues have said.

Although Dr. Kobrin’s Chechen information resonates and informs, I still think that the “she­bomber” as “she-wolf” might be a dangerous and murky association. There is nothing natural or animal-like about killing yourself in order to kill others. Wolves do not do this. On the other hand, the human behavior involved is barbaric, regressed, pathological, almost pagan, but this regression is entirely in human terms. (Yes, and some might say that employing advanced weaponry is even more barbaric; I happen to disagree. One’s motives and goals are paramount.) Also, psychiatrically, in the western world, girls and women attempt suicide far more often than they succeed at it. Thus, I would ask Dr. Kobrin whether she thinks this paradigm is being shifted significantly in the most woman-hating cultures?

Dr. Berko’s question about why there are so few female suicide killers is a very good one. Perhaps women are too oppressed to envision themselves as worthy of any male-like “honor;” perhaps they are simply too overburdened with domestic, agricultural, and childrearing tasks from dawn to dusk. Or, perhaps the life-force in women, even under very adverse conditions, is able to resist the lure of a death cult.

Dr. Lachkar is right to open the father-daughter discussion. Daughters are even more paternally abused and neglected than sons are in the Middle East. Perhaps a minority of daughters, like sons, have unconsciously decided that stepping into the male/paternal role is the only way they will ever please their fathers, (their cultures) receive any positive paternal (cultural) attention–and they are willing to die to get it. Psychologically, sons resolve their Oedipal quarrels with their fathers by becoming like their fathers and by rejecting their mothers. Daughters might resolve their Electra complexes with their mothers similarly (please see my book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman). Daughters must also “become” their mothers but in order to do so, they must psychologically “kill,” their mothers, not themselves.

Blowing oneself up does not resolve this psychological-developmental conflict. It ends the possibility of such a resolution.

Now, to Jamie’s questions.

1) Thinking mainly about one’s mother, not one’s father when one is about to die makes psychological and cultural sense. As one is being born one is with/within one’s mother, not with/within one’s father; there is only a thin line between birth and death; even if we have had a cold or abusive mother, we tend to cry out for her when we are in pain, lost, or facing death. Perhaps such girls weep, finally, for themselves, because they will not become mothers like their mothers (which is the culturally preferred resolution of childhood mother-daughter dynamics); thus, they may weep because they have failed their mothers; perhaps they are weeping for the children they will never have; most radically, perhaps they are weeping for themselves. There are some Arab, Muslim, Middle East women whom I have interviewed for my new book The Death of Feminism, who do wish to protect their mothers, or even avenge them.

2) Ah, as we all know, the “she-bomber,” like the “he-bomber” is romanticized and justified in many left-dominated liberal quarters. They are seen as “Davids” against the “Goliath” of American and Israeli democratic Empire. This vicarious identification with those who are seen as embracing death in order to deal death blows to capitalism, democracy, and, paradoxically, God, characterizes the nihilistic, passive, frustrated, but oh-so-safe American and European ideologues.

The left feminists are blinded by their politically correct multi-culturalism and by their anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism and so have, in my opinion, failed their own feminist founding principles and all those held hostage to Islamic terrorism and misogyny. What is also interesting, is that the female suicide killers have not been demonized in the western media or among western ideologues as “Killer Women,” or “Unnatural Women,” something that one might anticipate. Feminists who fought for equal pay for equal work were more demonized and mocked. Something is slipping below the radar here. I would love my colleagues to think about this.

Permit me to share an eerie resonance of my own. Dr. Berko quotes the “broken pitcher” above. When the Palestinian, Abu Isa, an Abu Nidal terrorist, who lived in St. Louis Missouri, referred to his 16 year old daughter, Palestina Isa, he referred to her as the “glass once broken can never be fixed.” She was broken because she was becoming too Americanized and because she was unwilling to act as her father’s cover when he went on terrorist missions. In 1989, he and Palestina’s mother jointly slaughtered her brutally. (I wrote about this in The Death of Feminism too).

Kobrin: To turn to Anat’s comments, it could be that the proverbial ‘breaking of the glass ceiling’ by the she-bomber is still in its formative stage. I agree too that the phenomenon is complex and believe that we are still driving “a model T” in terms of understanding it. I like Joan’s formulation of supermodels etc. and her important reminder that aggression can take many forms. Clearly, the media and the public thrive on the shock value and perverse Eros of such terrorism be it the female suicide bomber, the murder of a pregnant wife or the mother who murders her children, etc.

Unfortunately, terrorism tends to be inventive and some event will always put the ante. My colleague Yoram Schweitzer recently wrote, that Al Qaeda elevated the ideology of Istishhad (Martyrdom) to that of the “diamond in the crown” of global jihad. By extension, Al Qaeda has hyped the female suicide bomber, even though it only threatens to deploy her whereas its affiliates have already.

For example, the Chechen female suicide bomber Khava Barayeva along with another female accomplice drove a truck bomb into Russian Special Forces barracks in Alkhan Kala where she murdered 27 soldiers in June 2000. She was reported as saying “I know what I am doing. Paradise has a price, and I hope this will be the price for Paradise.” (Nedkov & Wilson, p.50). I take her words at face value – hers was a consciously motivated act. However, did she have any understanding of the psychodynamics of being scapegoated by her own family/culture/terrorist organization etc.? I doubt it. I can understand Dr. Chesler’s caveat about the she-wolf but the imagery and language of the Chechen national anthem could have played into Barayeva’s romanticism and desperation and she may have identified with the she-wolf’s alleged role of sacrificing herself for the pack/the nation. Such imagery and ideologies fuel the flames of these suicide murderers.

I remain skeptical though, to take the gender of any suicide bomber on the face of it because a person harbors a multitude of male and female identifications. Like the prostitute when turning a trick, the female suicide bomber might feel empowered as if she were male. In addition, to accept the issue of gender in this limited way is precisely to buy into terrorism’s concreteness and literality. If we take this bait, we will not be able to tackle the problem.

I am not completely sure if I understood Dr. Chesler’s question so let me know if I didn’t. I took it to be: is the phenomenon of the female suicide bomber on the increase and is it shifting into woman­hating cultures? I don’t know the answer but I do think of two things. First, we have global jihad and we must reconsider that in the Arab Muslim world they do not resolve the Oedipal complex in the same way – they have the Judar complex which means that “psychological maturity is an attack on the mother. One must kill in oneself the image of the mother, profane it, demythify it.” (Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, p. 227) I take this to mean a healthier more realistic image of the mother as being a woman; therefore, women are not to be oppressed, etc. But in the Arab Muslim world these dots haven’t been connected yet about Umi. Second, the phenomenon of the female suicide bomber holds the potential to occur in all cultures precisely because 1. everybody has a mother, 2. almost all cultures have the template of murder-suicide and 3. even in Western cultures where women have more freedom, it is still a struggle to be female.

It is no longer if but rather when – when will we have Caucasian converts to Islam or second generation (___fill in the name of the Arab/Muslim country) American/Canadian female suicide bombers? It is only a matter of time. Law enforcement is on the lookout, if they haven’t foiled some already.

FP: The Muslim male suicide bomber thinks he is on his way to a paradise where, among other things, he will have the 72 eternal virgins (the houries) or however many the latest interpretation has it, at his disposal. This is the way, obviously, that Islamic jihad utilizes sexual incentive on its warriors, since so much of physical pleasure with females, who are demonized in militant Islam, is denied to the Muslim male on this earth (because of gender apartheid, etc.).

But what does the She Bomber expect in paradise? I take it there are no sexual incentives for her? I don’t ask this to be crude or funny, but to actually analyze the dynamics of this culture in this context because it is crucially significant who is entitled and who is not entitled to have a personality and a sexuality.

The houri, after all, makes earthly Muslim women even more redundant in their society than they are already portrayed to be by fundamentalist Islam. Interestingly enough, even the individual houri herself is not sacred or special in any way. As the author Fatna Sabbah has noted, she “has no spiritual dimension; she is a thing because she has neither will nor any possibility of development…. [she] has no intellect; she does not think. She is a thing that awaits consumption.”

The houri is a manifestation of the ultimate misogyny, no?

In this context, what exactly does the She Bomber expect in paradise? What is she entitled to? Why is she forbidden sexual desires and rewards? Isn’t this reality connected to the fact that many She Bombers have been coerced to blow themselves up because of their sexuality in the first place? They are forced to become suicide bombers because they have violated the rigid rules regarding not being entitled to their own sexual self-determination.

Could the panel touch on some of these matters? There is, undoubtedly, a crucial component in Islamic jihad of sexuality and its relation to male and female, and all the double standards and hypocritical and impossible rules that are imposed on the genders.

Berko: This discussion is fascinating, and is going to many different spheres, to some extent because it is very difficult to have a purely intellectual discussion about such a complicated subject that arouses so many feelings. Indeed, the ‘female suicide terrorist’ is the ‘supermodel’. One of them even told me that this was her opportunity to be special, because oriental woman are very restricted… at long last she could be active in some area. According to Joan, who recalled that the father in Arab society is not as active in bringing up the children as the father in the west, especially with regard to daughters, who are brought up separately from him.

Also, what Phyllis had to say about wolves rang very true for me. And very often when we refer to Hobbes’ belief that man to man is a wolf, we are actually insulting wolves. As regards the need for daughters to please their fathers, it spite of the fact that if it wasn’t for the father who made it possible for his daughter to blow herself to save her family’s honor, there would be serious damage to the father’s status. The daughter that he protects from all danger has been taken from his possession and is even in a situation where she is surrounded by men, and this is the only time that no one asks the father anything with regard to his daughter….

Jamie’s question that refers to the mothers is important and significant and Phyllis’ responded to it. Without doubt, here is a case of a sense of ‘crushing motherhood’; the killer female terrorist who blows herself up will never be a mother… hence, this anger gives rise to extreme aggression on their part to the children.

Yousra, who was apprehended on her way to carrying out a suicide bombing, justifies attacking innocent citizens, including children. She says, “…I would definitely attack a kindergarten…I am capable of looking at your children, eating or playing, and blowing myself up…We’re performing these acts because of the Garden of Eden…” (quoted from my book: ‘The Path to the Garden of Eden’.)

Thus, Jardat, who exploded in a restaurant in Haifa (2003), only when she had finished eating a satisfying meal as she watched the children and their families having their Shabbat lunch.

In the end, the dreams of ‘female suicide terrorists’ as they related to me, of a husband, a home and most important of all – children….. are not different from the dreams of many women in the world.

Jamie’s burning questions force us to think big. The phenomenon of murder and suicide does not stop at Israel’s borders and has become a problem strategically and globally. It is contagious, it kills and threatens to disrupt our lives. There have been and will be national and religious struggles in the world that haven’t and yet won’t use masses of murderers exploding on civilians.

When Jamie refers to the Garden of Eden, it is clear that there, too, there is no equality between males and females. At any rate the sentence is repeated: “All that is forbidden in this world is permitted in the Garden of Eden…” Only, let us not forget that there are many more things forbidden to Moslem women and those prohibitions don’t become permissible in the Garden of Eden.

Suha, a suicide terrorist aged 18 referred to the Garden of Eden thus: “Life in the Garden of Eden isn’t like life here. It’s a different life. Of course the Garden of Eden is referred to in the Koran, I know about the Garden of Eden from the Koran. There is everything in the Garden of Eden, things that don’t exist in my life now… It’s more comfortable there, there is more greenery. People don’t get ill, they don’t get tired. The people are different from here… the Shahida is one of the 72 virgins. I thought I would be one of the 72 virgins…. What! Isn’t that enough for the Shahids???”

In the Garden of Eden, the ‘female suicide terrorists’ told me, in addition to all the rewards that await the Shahids like being in the presence of Allah and the Prophet Mahommed and his friends, they also give birth to children… with regard to the Shahidas, they weren’t sure whether they gave birth to children in the Garden of Eden.

‘Male suicide terrorists’ also spoke at great length of the rivers of honey and alcohol in the Garden of Eden. The idea of alcoholic beverages is central to descriptions of the Garden of Eden, since in the here-and-now, Muslims are forbidden from drinking alcohol. Eternal virgins are another constant theme – black-eyed women with transparent skin, no menstrual cycle, and no secretions of any kind.

Yes, the Garden of Eden is a reality for the female suicide murderers, as arises from Nancy’s remarks.

In 1996 I met with Sheikh Ahmad Yassin – the leader of the Hamas who was assassinated by the IDF (Israel Defense Force) in 2004. Yassin indicated to me that he objected to involving women in suicide missions, since ” the women have a special potential and that is – to bear children, which is what they should do”. Moreover, it could be deduced from his remarks that it was an affront to Arab masculinity for a woman to kill herself, since there are enough men for the job… A woman’s place is defined, delineated and clear and should not be infringed on… though, in spite of these statements by Sheikh Yassin, he made a very different announcement after the intentional suicide attack by the Hamas carried out by Raishi, a mother of two infants (2004). Had the Sheikh changed his opinion? Or, perhaps, events and her personal or family situation of the woman caused him to support the action

after the event.

The phenomenon of the she bomber arises from the sacrifice of the exploding woman by the society she lives in. This is more so that in the case of the he bomber. And as a victim, she becomes aggressive and sometimes even more so than the men. Thus, in my opinion, the use of women suicide terrorists will increase, and also because the operative advantage of using them in the eyes of the dispatchers who adopt an attitude of de-humanization towards the victims and justify the violence.

I would like to express my appreciation to my colleagues for the privilege of taking part in the panel and I would like to close with something that was said to me by Jamila, a Muslim social worker active in the Palestinian Women’s Association, who spoke about relations with the West and the conflict generated when the two cultures meet: “Things have been getting more and more drastic…My family is afraid. The children watch television. You can see everything on television. Every family has digital [cable] television, so you can see all the channels, sex too…And at the same time, everything is forbidden in Arab society, especially for girls. A person can’t live what he sees [on television]…It’s not healthy. It’s not reasonable to let families and children view these things on television, on one hand, and live a different life in reality, on the other. There’s a huge gap between what we see and the way we live. Western culture enters every Arab house through television. We’re constantly faced with a television reality.”(quoted from my book “The Path to the Garden of Eden”).

Lachkar: Wow! So many powerful insights!

First, about why Islamic terrorists weep? I think it’s true the tears are linked to rage rather than sentiments, but they are obviously not in contact with these affects because the behaviors seem more persecutory in nature (unconscious internal feeling with no voice) rather than superego with a voice or moral conscience (with a voice/conscious).

Secondly, “Where are the leftist feminists who should be enraged about these realities?” Ironically, the feminists basically do not care about the plight of the woman, it is more about victimization and identification with the victim as the underdog in society that need “rescuing.” So be it racial, women or even Islamic terrorists they will protect them at any price. The same applies to women killing off themselves and their babies, not so much to the fantasy of going to Paradise but more about becoming the ultimate victim. “Look at us even though we are women and not interested in 72 virgins, we are willing to blow ourselves up even without a reward!

Last point: women as “self haters.” Sticking to the thematic motif women as victims, my view is that they really do not “hate” themselves. They are in search of love/bonding. For instance, they seek to bond through the pain or the Mother of Pain, as outlined in my books, The NarcissiticBorderline Couple (2004) and The Many Faces of Abuse (1998). I have also expanded upon this theme in my article, “The Psychological Make-up of a Suicide Bomber.”

Chesler: This discussion is rare, timely, and wonderfully intelligent–but I feel we have only scratched the surface. We are all very conscious of the paradoxes here such as a Muslim girl or woman requiring her father’s or clan’s permission for all that she does–except when it involves killing herself in order to kill the designated enemy/scapegoated Other.

I would like to know whether the parents of female suicide killers respect them or are angry and disappointed in what they have done, or if they feel very differently about their sons who are male suicide killers. We also all sense that Eros, humanity’s life-force, certainly the possibility of one’s own maternal experience is being utterly perverted in the “handling” of female suicide killers. While men derive power and honor from becoming fathers, they are usually not as systematically trained to the task as girls and women are channelled into motherhood. Thus, being able to subvert both culture and biological possibility is no small thing. Dr. Kobrin’s points about the female suicide killers “throwing themselves at their victims” resonates, as do her point about the “Judar complex” and about the likelihood of Caucasian and Western converts to Islam also becoming suicide killers.

Dr. Berko’s points are especially important in terms of the aggression towards children shown by she­bombers. (We are, perhaps, less shocked by similar male aggression). Also, she reveals that several would-be she-bombers were not any clearer about what their Edenic rewards will be than they are clear about what their earthly rewards will be. I fear that Dr. Berko is right, that the current ratio of 8 women to hundreds of men will change, that more women will be recruited to kill themselves, especially if their status and their prospects for a decent life are zero given Islamic gender apartheid realities, and the nature of Islamic despotism and hatred of Israel, America, and the West.

In terms of Jamie’s opening comments, I want to remind us that a Palestinian woman who was herself a patient at an Israeli hospital was intercepted on her way to blow up that very hospital. This is up close and very personal and Wafa al-Bas must be extremely disassociated from her body and from her mind in order to do something like this–even more than most Muslim and Palestinian women might be which is really saying a lot.

I must, alas, close on a pessimistic note. The NY Times recently reviewed a Palestinian feature film about two male suicide killers very positively. The film was funded for 2 million dollars and has already been sold to 45 countries around the world, including Israel. I am told that a cantata for Rachel Corrie is happening in London. We have all been told that Steven Spielberg has hired playwright Tony Kushner to complete the script for a movie about the 1972 Palestinian masscre of Israeli athletes in Munich–but in a way that will help dramatically explain, if not justify such terrorism.

Everything is political, and money drives the politics. My friend and colleague, playwright Glynn O’Malley was commissioned to write a play about the first Palestinian female suicide bomber which, however, CAIR shut down in Cincinnati. The play had a second life on off-Broadway. O’Malley rewrote it in order to position the Palestinian bomber and her Israeli teenage victim more equally. I doubt he had offers of 2 million dollars; his portrayal of the Israelis was too compassionate. Finally, my friend and colleague, the filmmaker Pierre Rehov, has done a number of high quality films about the latest Palestinian Intifada, including “Hostages of Hatred” and his most recent about Palestinian male suicide killers. He does documentaries, not feature films–but as yet, none have been shown on HBO, PBS, the History Channel. A number of documentary films that are critical of Israel have been shown.

Is a filmmaker even now “pitching” the idea for a film about a she-bomber? If so, they probably have a better chance of getting it funded, bought, and shown if their politics are left, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israeli.

FP: Dr. Kobrin, last word goes to you.

Kobrin: The shahida She Bomber encapsulates and crystallizes the fantasy and ideologies of Islamic martyrdom in extremis. Unlike the He Bomber, the She Bomber draws us in with a perverse sexual allure that is often not recognized nor admitted to. Anat quotes Jamila, the Palestinian social worker, concerning the intrusion of Western television into the Palestinian home. Yet my hunch is that it is not so much Western norms concerning sexuality that are the root of the problem but rather the inability of the Ummah to recognize the problematic nature of the Umm’s bond to her baby in conjunction with shame based childrearing practices along with the fact that females are completely devalued in the Arab Muslim world and that their men have free sexual reign and have trouble controlling themselves as well as containing their rage.

In addition to this, the potential shahida is born into language and hence its Islamic ideologies. Ibn Warraq put it well – while there are moderate Muslims, Islam is not moderate. I would hasten to add that the ideologies seem to come in sets of binary oppositions further compounding the psychological splitting of experiencing the world in terms of the love-hate relationship with Umi. Hence the baby fails to develop a critical cognitive function which would act to bridge the extremes and provide a more realistic view of the world. It is as if there is a doubling of splitting. These ideologies are engrained early on and communicate to the little Muslim girl that she is at risk of being murdered if she does not tow the line with regard to the double standard of the honor code. It should come as no surprise that in certain instances where the maternal bonding has been particularly problematic, a little Muslim girl grows up wanting to become a shahida. This is also attractive to female converts to Islam given a similar set of difficulties since domestic violence’s murder-suicide is found in all cultures as well as problematic maternal bonding and shame based child rearing practices including sexual abuse.

I agree with Anat that the phenomenon of the She Bomber is on the rise. When I hear shahida, I also associate to several other related meanings. The word comes from the same root as the Shahada, the profession of faith [that Allah is God and Muhammad is his messenger] which is central to Islam. Shahida can also mean tombstone, index finger and for the ideologue ‘Azzam – trigger finger. It serves too as a sign of allegiance endorsing the ideology of jihad when an Islamist raises his clenched fist with the index finger pointing skyward. (cf. Oliver & Steinberg, The Road to Martyrs’ Square) The shahida she-bomber literally embodies this ideology. Terrorism is concrete, literal and transparent unconscious behavior. It is also imitative which indicates an impoverishment in being.

Joan identifies such impoverishment, namely, that the tears are tears of rage not sadness as these women are already emotionally dead – they have no language to express their denied rage about growing up under a death threat being treated as nothing more than object to be consumed, discharged and exploded. However, the She Bomber is extraordinarily revealing as she is a concrete representation of Muslim male murderous rage against the prenatal Umm. They hate their mothers unconsciously yet proclaim their love for Umi. Shakespeare would say – they protest too much when in fact, these bullies do not feel competent standing alone. They feel imprisoned in the maternal relationship, under occupation by the Umm while at the same time preoccupied and obsessed with her.

While terrorists often deliberately hide in plain view by practicing the ideology of taqiya deception, such as Mohammad Sidique Khan of the London bombing, they can not hide their unconscious behavior because they are completely unaware that they have an unconscious and they do not realize that all behavior is potentially meaningful. This is their Achilles’ heel. The she-bomber is a perfect example of how woefully ignorant they are about their inner lives being a mess of violent psycho­sexual fantasies. Sending a she bomber is a graphic depiction of their unconscious wish to murder their mothers. The imagery associated with the she-bomber is that of feigning being pregnant. In other words the shahida is the Islamic equivalent of a Freudian slip for the terrorists have unconsciously exposed themselves — their murderous rage and tremendous distain for the prenatal mother in plain view. This is part of the “Sheikh’s New Clothes” syndrome.

Joan also mentions love bonding. It links back to charisma which we know arises from the maternal bond. The mother is supposed to be like the warm sun for a baby. The baby seeks the mother out heliotropically like a sunflower. If the bonding is problematic, it is more on the order of a moth being drawn to a flame. There is a tendency then to compensate for this deficit later in life by seeking out a charismatic leader like bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi etc. as surrogates. This too is revealing since it is Eros run amok and the perversity which draws so many in. The terrorists essentially have created their own genre of Islamic snuff films of the beheadings and the suicide bombings with its hysterical melodrama and sadomasochism. Jamie, you used the word — “redundant” – the violence is redundant. It literally demonstrates a sense of deadness on the part of the Ummah – a profound inability to enjoy life – they envious for doing so and their inability to recognize painful feelings – to grieve.

Phyllis asked how do the parents of the She Bombers feel about their martyrdom? Is there a difference with the he bomber? It seems to me that it runs the whole gamut but one image comes to mind in particular when a Palestinian mother was asked this specific question concerning the martyrdom of her son. She said that had she known — she would have cleaved open her heart and sown him into her breast! so that he would not have been able to carry out the bombing. It is heartbreaking and revealing once again, that the imagery is that of a prenatal mother. Yet, it also obscures the fact that the true victims are the innocent and that her son carried out mass murder and maimed many survivors as well. Umm Iyad, another Palestinian mother was quoted as saying that “Palestine is eating its children.”

(J.M. Davis, Martyrs, p. 126)

Unfortunately, such “cannibalism” and child sacrifice along with the sadomasochism of Jihad and the she bomber as supermodel play well to a broad audience with the media promoting this because of the economics — it sells. Phyllis is absolutely right to remind us that everything is always political and that money talks. She cites a series of recent problems with regard to film and theater. I am going to end on a positive note for several reasons – CAIR does not scare me – American law enforcement “gets” CAIR, I have heard it with my own ears. Many more will get too when they read two new books – Robert Spencer’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades and Phyllis Chesler’s new opus – The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom. These authors remind me that once you taste freedom, there is no turning back.

Thank you, Jamie and the staff at FrontPageMag.com for framing the questions and facilitating an exchange which has been helpful.

FP: Anat Berko Joan Lachkar, Nancy Kobrin and Phyllis Chesler, thank you for this fascinating and truly unprecedented discussion.