[piercehawkeye45]

From the same source:

Anne Speckhard, adjunct associate Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Center and Professor of Psychology, Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels, writes:

"In the Palestinian territories, there currently exists a “cult of martyrdom.” From a very young age children are socialized into a group consciousness that honors “martyrs”, including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of “martyrs.” Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular “martyrs”, posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extol the virtues of bombers. Each act of suicide terrorism is also marked by a last testament and video, which are prepared ahead of time by the “martyr” who can later reach great popularity when the video is played on television. Despite the very deep and real grief of the family and friends left behind, the funerals of “martyrs” are generally accompanied with much fanfare by community and sponsoring organization. Often, the effect of this is confusing to outsiders as it can disrupt, delay and even circumvent the family’s ability to focus on its grief over the loss of a family member and it may even support the family in claiming to outsiders joy over the loss of its loved one. This “cult of martyrdom”, which has a strong underpinning in longstanding cultural roots (the honoring of martyrs), appears to have developed principally over the last decade, as the first act of suicide terrorism occurred in Israel only twelve years ago."[7]

You don't think this sort of atmosphere would produce suicide terrorists without the need of full out brainwashing? The Japanese did not to be brainwashed to fly their planes into US ships, they were raised in an environment where altruistic suicide was looked as noble, and the same environment exists and probably exceeds in Palestine.

Witness Hamas’ claims to have thousands of self-recruited individual bombers

In both Palestine and Chechnya, experiences of deep personal traumatization and bereavement create in some a vulnerability, which leads them to seek out the ideological message of those promoting violent and jihadist methods.

Arin’s motivation for violence began first with the constant humiliations at checkpoints, threatening encounters with security officials on the road and in her community and finally culminates in a desire to be a bomber when her boyfriend was killed two months previous to her action. Arin is still so distressed by his death that she cannot discuss it but she states that when he was killed, “My mind was stopped. My life was stopped. My thought was everything is black.” She describes going to ask for a bomb. “I wasn’t asked. I asked to get the belt.”

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/alumni/news_...20_suicide.pdf


What UT quoted could very well be exactly true in some cases, I don't doubt it, but the fact still remains that these bombers have to be raised in a certain social environment to go to that level. Every quote here shows two persuasive forces, the social resistance to the occupying force and a group that wants to fight that occupation for a variety of reasons and are willing to use the social resistance to their advantage. Maybe I underestimated the amount of influence by these groups, I realize I will never always have a true view on this matter, but that second factor is still present and strong enough for me to legitimately claim that as the more powerful influence of the two. From the sources that I have read, every suicide bombing has occurred when a foreign nation with a different religion has occupied and threatened the lifestyle of the people in the occupying country. Some may be more extreme than others but that trend still remains. If you can find something different, I would like you to show me Lookout.

I was not trying to throw in some anti-imperialistic slant in my previous post but every suicide bombing I have seen has been a result of imperialism in some way or another so don't attack my intentions or my "bubble".