Sacred Rage (Page 3)

As an American Jew traveling in the Islamic world, Stern naturally raised suspicions among some of her subjects. There is a tense, dark comedy to her exchanges with terrorists that gives her book the flavor of a thriller. During a meeting with Islamic militants in Pakistan, she writes, her hosts

wanted to look me over for themselves. After they leave, [my guide] tells me that they were trying to determine if I came to Lahore on a mission to kill their leader. They wanted to know if I was there on behalf of RAW [the Indian intelligence service]. Or working for the [Israeli] Mossad. "As a result of their inspection, they have determined that you work for the CIA," my guide informs me, seemingly bemused. I cannot tell whether he concurs with the militants' assessment.
   Well, I'm not, I tell him hotly, foolishly. How can you persuade someone you're not working for the CIA? It is clear in any case that speaking with an American woman is a novelty for all three of my new acquaintances. My guide admits that I am the first American he has ever met, and the first Jew he has ever seen.
   "Anyway, it's okay; they are flattered if the CIA is interested in them," he says.
   "How did they decide that I'm not planning to assassinate their leader?" I ask.
   "It is obvious. You can tell a person's character by looking into her eyes. You have innocence in your eyes."

Appearances notwithstanding, Stern is far from naïve and fully appreciates that most of her informers tried to use her for their own purposes, from projecting an exaggerated image of their power to warning their enemies, from raising their profile in the West to winning a place in the pages of history. She therefore tried to check and double-check their stories with intelligence services, which were often no less dubious as sources than her informers. Her own impressions of the interviewees and the atmosphere of the encounters, including even smells, are recounted at length in colorful and, at times, poetic descriptions.

Stern suggests four principal motivations behind terrorism. The first of these is a stark sense of alienation. Here, Stern gives a vivid description and analysis of the American neo-Nazi and Christian cults, notably a white supremacist group in rural Arkansas that aimed at restoring pure white supremacy in the States through the elimination of blacks, Jews and other nonwhite ethnic groups. They "hoped to hasten the return of the Messiah by 'carrying out God's judgments' against unrepentant sinners. They believed that humanists, communists, socialists, and Zionists had taken over the US government. They knew for a fact that Jews, Satan's direct descendants, were working closely with the Antichrist, whose forces included the United Nations, the IMF, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Illuminati, and the 'One-Worlders'.... They had joined forces with other right-wing groups in the hope of destroying what they called the Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG)."

It's not surprising that most religiously motivated zealot groups--Christian, Jewish and Muslim--possess very similar worldviews and vocabularies and, at times, identify similar enemies. The world of the terrorist, regardless of ideology, is divided between the in-group members ("the chosen people") and their dehumanized enemy ("the children of darkness"), a manichean dichotomy that makes killing and self-sacrifice inevitable. Such thinking, Stern notes, permeated the antiabortion terror that plagued America in the 1990s.

The second motive for being ready to kill and be killed--perhaps the most powerful one--is a sense of humiliation. Stern illustrates this point with a comparison of the immense poverty and deprivation of Palestinians in Gaza's refugee camps with the luxurious dwellings of their neighbors, the 6,000 Jewish settlers who compose 0.5 percent of Gaza's population but who hold 42 percent of the land within well-guarded enclaves like Netzarim, while living off Palestinian labor and consuming six times the amount of water as the Arab population. For a population that has been forced into a permanent subordinate position by an occupying power, this disparity is not only a hardship but a searing humiliation as well. As Victor observes, the failure of adults to win the Palestinian struggle and their apparent helplessness in the face of such injustice has bred a generation that is revolting not only against the Israelis but also against their elders, who have been powerless to prevent their children from becoming martyrs.

Stern, who can scarcely hide her moral indignation at the situation in the occupied territories, regards humiliation as a major reason for the appeal of groups like Hamas. In fact, the motivations for violent actions reflect a mixture of causes, including religious fervor, nationalism, poverty, dispossession and a thirst for revenge. "Hardship always brings people back to God," said one leader of Hamas. "Islam distinguishes us in that it prepares people to die for the sake of Allah." Yet a closer look at Palestinian martyrdom (suicide bombers, for example) suggests that, piety aside, a cruel social calculus is also at work here. When a starving refugee family has ten or twelve kids with no prospects for a proper education, stable employment or suitable marriages, the appeal to "donate" one or two children to Allah becomes very seductive. In exchange, the family receives considerable "charity" funds, honor and social recognition. The potential "martyr," in turn, is promised glory in this world and the next. His videotaped testament is broadcast all over the Islamic (and sometimes Western) world and his photos are carried in mass demonstrations. Moreover, the Garden of Eden is promised not only to him but to his entire family. Sometimes these promises are accompanied by ambiguous sexual afterworld rewards--a clear example of the invention of a tradition by popular Islam.

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