(Larger Image)
|
The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber
by Anne Marie Oliver, Paul F. Steinberg
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (2006-04-27)
ISBN: 0195305590
EAN: 9780195305593
Dewy Decimal #: 956.94054
Paperback: 304 pages
SKU: C076OAI
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Clean unmarked pages. Clean unmarked cover. Has some shelf wear. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. All orders include an e-Book about starting your own Internet Business in PDF format. FREE Domestic DELIVERY CONFIRMATION! We ship daily Mon-Sat and will let you know when your item has shipped along with your e/DC number. [HI, AK, PR, VI, GUAM, SAIPAN & West Coast customers, please use Expedited Shipping, otherwise it may take longer than the estimated 14 business days.] Items are from a smoke free and air conditioned environment.
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
Don't expect to find here the usual cliches about suicide bombers and what drives them. In this unique study, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg render the story of two intertwining, often clashing journeys. The authors lived for six months with a Palestinian refugee family in Gaza at the beginning of the intifada, and offer a gritty, poetic portrait of the time. They also provide an unrivalled documentary of the underground media they collected during the course of six years in the area. Although they could not have surmised as much at the beginning, they soon found themselves led through these media into the world of the suicide bomber. Their early study, notably, anticipated the spread of suicide missions years in advance.
Dispensing with the platitudes and dogma that typify discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the authors show that the suicide bomber is a complex, contradictory construction, and can be explained neither in terms of cold efficacy nor sheer evil. Theirs is the only book on the subject to illustrate the ecstatic, intoxicating aspects of suicide missions, and provide extensive access to materials that have remained largely unseen in the West despite the fact that they have served as indispensable tools in the construction and propagation of the suicide bomber. The book contains 86 illustrations drawn from the authors' archive as well as numerous conversations with leaders and followers of Hamas, including a rare interview with a suicide bomber whose bomb failed to explode on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem.
Here is an important and timely work that will challenge the way we think about the intifada, suicide bombers, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Scary stuff but very real
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-05-03
This book is pretty much a fairly straight reporting of Palestinian cultural influences that produce what we read about in the news. Children growing up steeped in hatred and the sick machismo of the Palestinian Arab Muslim male. It's very sad and insurmountable problem that the Israeli's and the rest of the world face, basically an ignorant violent culture that isn't going away.
The book documents this in an objective way. I gave it 4 of 5 stars because I believe it recorded the authors experiences truthfully. It is however somewhat overwhelming in the pure hate that you are constantly being bombarded with, and with no end in sight. This makes the book a bit depressing.
|
|
The book in perspective
Rating  (3)
Date: 2006-08-06
9 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
Oliver and Steinburg's book is an excellent look into the world of the Palestinian suicide bomber. Unlike some reviewers that disparage the political analysis missing from this book, I found the authors' insights quite accurate. The authors' aims were not to provide the historical context, nor to provide a critique of suicide terrorism in general (a la the comment concerning the Tamil Tigers above), but to give an experential portrayal of Palestine during the first intifada. Paradoxically, a couple reviewers bemoaned the book because it portrayed Palestinian suicide bombers as religious zealots and nuts, which makes one wonder if they actually read the book because one of the central themes of the book is the understanding of the suicide bomber as a rational actor.
This book puts Palestinian suicide bombing into the context of Palestine, which is why the understanding of the religious theme becomes incredibly important in contrast to secular groups such as the Tamils, which are motivated purely by politics. A major failure in the understanding of terrorism comes from secular scholars who don't or can't understand religious motivations because those of us in the West no longer regard it as important, though to believe this of the rest of the world is a severe misunderstanding of contemporary social realities and ends up projecting one cultures assumptions onto a completely different one with different mores and values. The primary reason given by suicide bombers for their actions is revenge, but understanding the religious background in the Palestinian context is very important to understand some of the justifications behind their actions. Of course, both religion and politics will remain factors that provide the background for understanding suicide bombing, while the primary factors motivating these individuals will always be personal experiences of oppression and/or abuse (in their eyes).
This book gives one an inside look into the world of the Palestinian terrorist and does not claim to provide ultimate causes, a look at Palestine outside the world of religious terrorism, in-depth analyses of all factors, or a look at suicide bombing in general. For students of terrorism this is an intriguing glimpse into a particular social reality of Palestine - that of the world of those who fight as religious terrorists. It's extensive, and forever irrecoverable, collection of intifada media, as well as an in-depth look at the language of the intifada make this book worth the time it takes to understand the insider worldviews, dialogues between believers, and images it records.
|
|
The conclusions are fundamentally flawed and misleading!
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-05-15
4 out of 18 customers found this reveiw helpful
As one reviewer so eloquently pointed out, Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg show a complete disregard for political and social factors in their extremely superficial and biased analysis of suicide terrorism. In order to describe the true motives behind suicide attacks, one must look into the root causes of suicide terrorism. Contrary to popular belief, a typical suicide bomber is not a religious zealot seeking to destroy the West because he abhors our liberal values. In point of fact, most suicide bombers are secular individuals, as corroborated by the fact that the group responsible for most suicide attacks in the world the Tamil Tigers are adamantly opposed to religion. Admittedly, religion is often used as a tool to recruit new suicide bombers by promising them eternal life in paradise. Nonetheless, religion is by no means a primary motive behind suicide terrorism. While its importance should not be downplayed or denied, it only plays a secondary role.
Robert Pape has in my opinion conducted the most meticulous and comprehensive study of suicide terrorism. What makes Pape's study so superior to every other book on suicide terrorism is that it refuses to make simplistic and unsubstantiated claims. It delves deep into the root causes of suicide terrorism and is not afraid to ask the dangerous questions. Pape's study demonstrates without a doubt that most suicide bombers are driven primarily by political motives. According to Pape, the principal motive of suicide bombers is to obliterate the presence of foreign powers from the areas that suicide bombers consider to be their homelands. Therefore, simply labeling a Palestinian suicide bomber as a religious fanatic driven solely by religious motives is a gross overgeneralization and oversimplification. Most Palestinian suicide bombers have divulged that their primary motive is to fight the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and to relieve the suffering of their people. They believe that the only way to fight a much more powerful adversary is to resort to suicide missions. In the view of the Palestinian suicide bombers all targets are legitimate since they are at war with Israel. They also believe that they have the right to retaliate against the Israeli killing of the Palestinian children and women which Israel by the way conveniently labels as the "collateral damage".
Understanding suicide terrorism does not suggest in any way that it is morally justifiable. But if we really wish to understand its root causes then we must tell the truth and refrain from making sensationalistic albeit incorrect and misleading conclusions. People who live under the Israeli occupation are subjected daily to humiliation and derogatory comments. They live in abject poverty where desperation, despair and hopelessness are omnipresent. It is out of these gruesome conditions that suicide terrorism emerges. Imagine being humiliated and mistreated every day in your own country by an extremely powerful bully. What would you do?
All these factors are somehow overlooked or at best downplayed in this book. Subsequently, the conclusions are erroneous, inaccurate and biased. I recommend Robert Pape's brilliant book Dying to Win The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism and John Esposito's Unholy War Terror in the Name of Islam. In addition to these books, I recommend an extremely powerful and disturbing movie Paradise Now.
|
|
Partisan Misrepresentations
Rating (1)
Date: 2005-07-24
7 out of 23 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is one of the most obnoxious partisan screeds I have come across in a long history of reading about this region. The authors conveniently ignore the entire political context, that of Isreal's belligerent military occupation of Palestinian territories, which is what the people they have written about are fighting against. Such decontextualized, depoliticizing representations lead readers to interpret the subjects of this book as simply deranged individuals, rather than politically motivated people who are shaped by and reacting to their history and social context. In addition, the authors either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent the range of complex meanings associated with martyrdom in Palestinian society, which in fact go well beyond the issue of suicide bombers. Drawing on the most cliched set of Orientalist caricatures, the authors portray their subjects as alternately murderous, backwards, bizarrely exotic, sadistic, or simply crazy. This is not a book for anyone who actually wants to learn about the social, political and religious situation in Palestine and their relationship to martyrdom and suicide bombers.
|
|
A scary look at suicide bombers
Rating (4)
Date: 2005-01-17
17 out of 30 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book shows how Arab society in the Levant has supported a culture of death and destruction. It shows the elements of the incitement and manipulation that create this culture. And it makes it clear that suicide bombings are not just a few acts of a small minority, but have become an inherent aspect of the overall community. It makes one sad to see all the destruction, and it makes one worried about the future of the Arab community as a whole, which appears to be its own worst enemy right now.
Still, I had to take away a star from my rating. That is because the authors make a huge effort to be totally neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not entirely succeed in this, but that isn't my complaint. My problem with this attitude is that neutrality between aggressors and victims is a stand in itself. Neutrality favors aggression and insanity, both of which need to be condemned severely. Arab aggression is not helping Arabs or Jews. It isn't helping the region to become more peaceful. Quite the contrary. Aggression needs to be opposed. And the authors ought to have done just that.
|
|
|