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Girl Suicide Bombers

By Anne Applebaum
Posted Tuesday, April 2, 2002, at 12:49 PM ET
Ayat Akhras

Last weekend, following the Friday suicide of Ayat Akhras, an 18-year-old Palestinian girl who blew herself up at the entrance to a Jerusalem supermarket, the BBC broadcast a small segment of the video tape she had recorded beforehand. There was a flash of dark eyes and long black hair, a checkered head scarf. A few words in Arabic could be heard—and then the BBC switched to another set of pictures.

By now, we've all seen excerpts from such videos. They have a weird formality about them and a stage-managed feel that somehow fails to evoke much emotion on the part of the viewers. After Ayat Akhras appeared on screen, however, it was hard to focus on the rest of the news.

In part, it was the shock of seeing a girl's face behind the keffiyeh, although rationally there was no reason to be surprised by a female martyr, as they are plentiful enough in Western cultural history. The Catholic Church has a host of martyred female saints—Joan of Arc among them—and women terrorists fought with Italy's Red Brigades, Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang, and America's Weathermen, among many others. In the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, woman combatants are hardly exceptional either: The Israeli army itself has female soldiers.

Yet Ayat Akhras, the third Palestinian woman to die carrying out a suicide attack, was still unusual. She fit none of the standard descriptions of "typical" suicide bombers. Not only was she not male, she was not overtly religious, not estranged from her family, not openly associated with any radical groups. She can hardly be described as a woman without a future. She was young, she was a good student, and she was engaged to be married —all of which is why her death reveals a great deal about the changing nature of the Palestinian terror campaign.

At the most pedestrian level, her death tells us something about the effects that Israel's border policy is having on the terrorist organizations inside the territories. Up to a point, the Israeli checkpoints work. Since the middle of the 1990s, it has been almost impossible for unmarried men under the age of 40 to get legitimate permits to cross the border into Israel, for any reason at all. Terrorist groups have therefore begun to look further afield for potential volunteers. They've had some success among Israeli Arabs—and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the group that armed Akhras, claims to have set up a special unit to train female suicide bombers. "We have 200 young women from the Bethlehem area alone ready to sacrifice themselves for the homeland," an Al-Aqsa leader told the Guardian last week.

Yet the use of women—young women—isn't entirely a matter of terrorist tactics either. There is a public relations game at work, too. By sending someone like Akhras into a supermarket to set off a bomb, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—or its backers—are knowingly breaking down whatever frail, lingering barriers remain between combatants and noncombatants, terrorists and innocent civilians in the Middle East. The war has come to this: Women and children are now killing women and children. One of the two Israelis who died following Akhras' suicide attack was a teen-ager, a year younger than her.

The message for Israel, and the rest of the world, is clear: Terrorism is not just a fringe phenomenon. Terrorists are not just strange young men whispering in dark rooms. Terrorists are high-school students, terrorists are women—and terrorists are all around you. No one—not the old man on the bicycle or the young girl walking to school—can be discounted. All Palestinians are potential terrorists, and terrorism will never go away. Whether or not all of this is actually true is immaterial: The point is to make the Israelis think it is, and thus give up, withdraw, quit the Middle East—or else undertake a massive and potentially disastrous military operation of the sort that may have begun this week.

Finally, Akhras' death also underlines, again, something that we already knew but don't always focus on. Unlike many of the members of al-Qaida, the Palestinian groups that plan and carry out terrorist attacks are not all composed of religious fanatics. The people who are killing themselves in the name of the Palestinian cause are not necessarily doing so because they believe they will be granted entrance to paradise or because God will reward them with a succession of beautiful virgins. Nor are those in charge of this war madmen gripped by holy ecstasy or by a burning desire to see all their female relatives locked behind black veils. This is a political war, not a religious war, and the suicide bombings are being carefully planned and executed as a part of a precise political strategy. The men who sent a young girl into a supermarket carrying explosives knew what they were doing—as did she.

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Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.
Photograph of Ayat Akhras from Ho/Reuters.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


All Palestinians are not potential terrorists, even though many are. The ones who are not terror-oriented are the silent minority, and they must be empowered (because they are the only hope). And the only way to empower them is to create a void by eliminating Arafat from the picture. So, no matter what the cost, the U.S. must declare Arafat to be the terrorist he is and must support Israel in its efforts to remove him from power. It's a dangerous course, but it's the only way that a reasonable Palestinian leader will emerge. And that is the only hope the Palestinians really have.

--John

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


There are many Palestinian Christians living amongst the horror, who just want peace. There are also approx. one million Muslim Arabs living in Israel with Israeli citizenship & passports. Peace will come to the Holy Land when the Palestinians learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews.

--Max Steel

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


C.S.Lewis [in the Narnia books] says "Wars become ugly when women fight."… No, wars do not "become ugly" when women fight--ugliness is the basic condition of all warfare. However, the lesson of Ms. Akhras and the Palestinians for all of us is that war becomes truly tragic when the soldiers of an army are brave and true but its generals are fools.

--The Bell

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


The group that sends a message, "You can trust no one in our population not to kill you," sends the message, "Unless you get rid of all of us, you will die." This is very dangerous; it's an invitation to genocide. On the one hand, the people of Palestine seem to be saying that they have nothing to lose. This sends a message to the world to look at their situation. This is a definite benefit to them. On the other hand, the people of Palestine also seem to be counting on Israel's personal morality (or at least Israel's need to appear moral before the world) not to commit genocide. They seem to be saying that the people of Israel will bow to world pressure and not wipe them out. At the very least, the message is that Israel is a good enough world citizen to follow certain rules of civilization. There is another dangerous element to this for the people of Palestine. What if they are wrong? What if Israel says, "Damn world opinion. It's us or them, so it's going to be us"?

--Dea

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


All the replies that I have read so far [in The Fray] on this subject miss the point. The point is that after three generations of living in refugee camps and under an oppressive conqueror and a repressive PLO under Arafat, the women are now radicalized. All cynicism aside, no one is 'cowardly' using anyone to do their dirty work. These women are the fruits of a failed experiment, namely Israel. No one should kid themselves, more are coming. When women who are the carriers of civilization inside of themselves become radicalized, no horror then becomes unimaginable. Remember that!

--Ronald F. Titsch

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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