de Búrca, Aoibhín. Preventing Political Violence Against Civilians. Nationalist Militant Conflict in Northern Ireland, Israel And Palestine. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Reviews
Webber, David, Kristen Klein, Arie Kruglanski, Ambra Brizi, and Ariel Merari. “Divergent Paths to Martyrdom and Significance among Suicide Attackers.” Terrorism and Political Violence (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2015.1075979
Abstract
This research used open source information to investigate the motivational backgrounds of 219 suicide attackers from various regions of the world. We inquired as to whether the attackers exhibited evidence for significance quest as a motive for their actions, and whether the eradication of significance loss and/or the aspiration for significance gain systematically differed according to attackers’ demographics. It was found that the specific nature of the significance quest motive varied in accordance with attackers’ gender, age, and education. Whereas Arab-Palestinians, males, younger attackers, and more educated attackers seem to have been motivated primarily by the possibility of significance gain, women, older attackers, those with little education, and those hailing from other regions seem to have been motivated primarily by the eradication of significance loss. Analyses also suggested that the stronger an attacker’s significance quest motive, the greater the effectiveness of their attack, as measured by the number of casualties. Methodological limitations of the present study were discussed, and the possible directions for further research were indicated.
Morag, Raya. Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema. London: Tauris, 2013.
Waltzing with Bashir proposes a new paradigm for cinema trauma studies – the trauma of the perpetrator. Recognizing a current shift in interest from the trauma suffered by victims to that suffered by perpetrators, the book seeks to theorize this still under-studied field thus breaking the repression of this concept and phenomenon in psychoanalysis and in cinema literature. Taking as a point of departure the distinction between testimony given by the victim and confession made by the perpetrator, this pioneering work ventures to define and analyze perpetrator trauma in scholarly, representational, literary, and societal contexts. In contrast to the twentieth-century definition of the perpetrator based on modern wars and totalitarian regimes,Morag defines the perpetrator in the context of the twenty-first century’s new wars and democratic regimes. The direct result of a drastic transformation in the very nature of war, made manifest by the lethal clash between soldier and civilian in a battlefield newly defined in bodily terms, the new trauma paradigm stages the trauma of the soldier turned perpetrator, thus offering a novel perspective on issues of responsibility and guilt.
Such theoretical insights demonstrate that the epistemology of the post-witness era requires breaking deep-seated psychological and psychiatric, as well as cultural and political, repression. Driven by the emergence of a new wave of Israeli documentary cinema, Waltzing with Bashir analyzes the Israeli film and literature produced in the aftermath of the second Intifada. As Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir and other new wave films demonstrate, Israeli cinema, attached on one side to the legacy of the Holocaust and on the other to the Israeli Occupation, is a highly relevant case for probing the limits of both victim and perpetrator traumas, and for revisiting and recontextualizing the crucial moment in which the victim/perpetrator cultural symbiosis is dismantled.
Raya Morag is an Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Table of Contents
Introduction
From Victim to Perpetrator Trauma
Part I: Victim Trauma
1. The Body as the Battlefield
2. Chronic Victim Trauma and Terror
3. Queerness, Ethnicity, and Terror
Part II: Perpetrator Trauma
4. The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Male Perpetrator
5. The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Female Perpetrator
6. The New Wave of Documentary Literature
Conclusion
The Perpetrator Complex
Yarchi, Moran. “The Effect of Female Suicide Attacks on Foreign Media Framing of Conflicts: The Case of the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 37.8 (2014): 674-88.
URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2014.921768
Abstract
The study examines the effect of female suicide attacks on foreign media framing of conflicts. Examining the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, 2,731 articles were sampled that covered terrorist events (American, British, and Indian press); 625 appeared in the week following a female’s suicide attack, 97 reported an attack by a female perpetrator. The findings suggest that foreign media discourse around female suicide bombers promotes more messages about the society within which the terrorists are embedded. Since the coverage of female terrorists tends to provide more detailed information about the perpetrator, it focuses more on the terror organizations’ side of the conflict’s story.
Brym, Robert J. and Bader Araj. “Suicidality and Suicide Bombing Revisited: A Rejoinder to Merari.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 35.10 (2012): 733-739.
URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2012.712033
Abstract
Ariel Merari purports to demonstrate a tendency on the part of suicide bombers to be motivated by depression and suicidal tendencies. However, he misconstrues the present authors’ critique of his work and misinterprets their research. By clarifying both issues, this article seeks to substantiate three claims: (1) Merari’s sampling procedure precludes generalization; (2) interviewer and contextual effects probably bias his findings; (3) evidence challenges his inferences.
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