Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers

by Barbara Victor

Book Overview

When Yasser Arafat in January 2002 called on Palestinian women--his "army of roses"--to join in the struggle against Israeli occupation, even he was surprised by their swift and devastating response.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 157954830X
• ISBN13: 9781579548308
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An interesting topic

When a bunch of ladies decide to become suicide bombers, I think it is proper to ask what's going on. We're not seeing a spontaneous reaction. Most folks don't blow themselves up. Most ladies don't do it. And even if one suddenly decided to do so, most do not have access to the explosives. This book explains some of the pressures these women were put under, and how they were led into such destructive tasks. It's touching and heartbreaking. The author shows us how six-year old girls in first grade are indoctrinated to the extent that they all are eager to be martyrs, so they can cause deaths of Jews and go to Paradise. As we learn, to prospective martyrs, Paradise is a place no Jews ever get to! Still, there are some outstanding questions I'm sure we all have. First, is this tactic, um, working? Will it achieve something? Second, just what is the overall goal of those who send these ladies out on such missions, if any? Third, just where is the support and funding coming for the entire operation, including the propaganda and training? Fourth, what can be done to stop it? To some extent, the tactic is "working." Suicide bombings are big news. I think antizionists have long realized that deaths play in their favor, whether they be deaths of Jews or Arabs. Suicide bombing gives one both, what could be better than that? And this book seems to confirm my suspicions in that regard. Meanwhile, whatever the overall goal may be, the result has been to afflict "an entire generation with a consuming desire to die." As for the support and funding, well, it has come from Arafat and his coterie. Victor shows that they've force-fed hatred to an entire population. And they've obtained fiscal and political support from Arab nations as well as the European Union. To her credit, Victor shows the analogy between the sacrifice of today's young Arabs and the sacrifices of the, um, Youth in the defence of Berlin in 1945. But isn't there a goal? Freedom? Land? Maybe so! But even here, Victor allows us to be warned that this may not be achievable. After all, Israel is small. It may appear to some people that either the West Bank and Gaza or all of Israel is just the right size to accommodate a new Arab nation: all one has to do is dispose of all the Jews there. But that's not necessarily the case. What if it is simply too small? What if the Arabs that demand a new nation can't fit into just the West Bank and Gaza, or even into all of Israel? Or what if some space is to be left for the Jews? Victor quotes an Israeli general who recommends that some space in the Sinai may be needed to provide enough room. Victor does make a few errors. One is her claim about UN resolution 242. She says the French version requires Israel to withdraw from "all territories," while the official and binding one says "the territories." But the truth is that the binding one says "territories," and has no "the." Neither version has an "all." This was a major issue in the deb

Polarizing topic

Quite interesting how people who already have an axe to grind against everybody's favourite whipping boy - Israel - hate the book. The fact is that Palestinians of every age are constantly bombarded by anti-Semitic hate propaganda in every single media - TV, books, newspapers and videos - 24-7. This has been demonstrated time and time again and is irrefutable. To deny it or ignore it is the height of either ignorance or stupidity - you choose. It's no wonder that women as well as men and boys choose to kill themselves. They are glorified and encouraged to murder the so-called 'descendants of pigs and apes' by Palestinian political and religious leaders. All day - everyday. It's like Nazi Germany only much, much worse. (Hitler didn't have TV and music videos at his disposal.)A reviewer from BC wrote, "....her simplistic analysis of 'what makes a suicide bomber' and her conspicuous silence on the overwhelming role of the barbaric Israeli occupation." This statement only illustrates how incredibly uninformed the reviewer is, and by extension how worthless her opinion of the book actually is. She probably has not a single clue as to how and why Israel actually came into posession of any of its territories in the first place. As for Israel's 'overwhelming role', well, the reviewer must be privy to some information that the rest of the world lacks. Either that, or she's just a typical, uninformed dingbat.Having said that, there are probably as many individual reasons for suicide bombers as there are suicide bombers. It's not reasonable to believe that the author has found 'THE REASON' for the recent phenomenon of female Palestinians shredding themselves. However, to many readers, it isn't good enough unless somehow the evil Jews can be blamed.BTW - Tamil females were doing it before the Palestinians latched onto the idea. Arafat and his cronies have made the horrific crimes of suicide and murder seem like something other than what it truly is : a barbaric act perpetrated by a society which has been brain-washed into losing its collective sense of right vs wrong. Although it's hard to blame Sharon for that, I'm sure many will try nonetheless.

A close look at desperate situations and extreme actions

Suicide bombing is an inherently polarizing topic: I don't think it's possible to lack an opinion on it or to be unmoved by its occurrences. What Victor does in this book is to give her readers a close look into the lives of Palestinians who choose to become kamikazes. She does treat male bombers, but her main focus is on the relatively new breed of female suicide bombers, shahidas, who have arisen since 2002. The author interviews inmates, surviving families, Palestinian officials, and psychologists. She also speaks with Israeli officials and the families of bombing victims. She offers a harrowing and fascinating examination of extremist religion and politics, occupation and oppression, hopelessness, and hatred. It's not a pretty picture, and Victor doesn't offer easy answers. She's neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli; rather, she empathizes with her subjects' human pain, whether its the pain of a bereft mother or that of a young woman who chooses to strap on a bomb and walk into a crowded street. Victor frames the personal stories with a view of the larger political context for suicide bombing, concentrating on events from the mid-1980s to early 2003. She discusses how the intifadas have energized Palestinian resistance and how the failed early 1990s peace process affected the conflict. In examining the strategies of recruiting and training female suicide bombers, she is especially critical of exclusively male power structure of Palestinian organizations like Hamas and Hizbollah and the use they make of women as political symbols. She characterizes the process as predatory and describes how the women involved have little power and few choices - and how theyt frequently seek martyrdom as a release from a repressive society that allows them severely circumscribed lives. Victor's book would benefit from a stronger organizational scheme (she's a film-maker, and the book progresses more like an episodic film than a structured piece of writing), but it remains a vivid and balanced examination of a fascinating and unsettling topic.

Valuable insight

One issue that some reviewers here have pointed out is that supposedly misery and oppression lead to suicide bombings. As the author points, that can be one ingredient. However, a few facts seem to undercut the "oppression" argument.1. Some suicide bombers are not oppressed at all. The Saudi participants in the 911 attacks were actually quite wealthy in some cases with quite comfortable lives available as an option. There are many conflicts far worse that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in terms of human misery that do NOT produce even one suicide bomber, due to lack of cultural/state "infrastructure".2. It requires more than just a motivated potential bomber. It requires an organizational infrastructure, recruitment, funding, training, cultural sanction and other elements. The Palestinian suicide bombing campaign has more in common with the WW2 Japanese Kamikazi campaign (which also had recruitment, infrastructure, cultural sanction and state support) than just the simple "repression" argument.In that sense especially, Victor is quite correct that this IS a Palestinian societal and govermental effort and that these unfortunate women are being used as cannon fodder.

Bizarre!

The author gives the personal stories of the females who became suicide bombers while she was writing her book: Wafa, the 1st suicide had been divorced by her husband because of her failure to provide him with children. She was living at home with no chance to remarry because of her lack of dowry and infertility when she decided to commit suicide. Darine, the 2nd suicide was a brilliant university student whose parents nonetheless were pressuring her to marry. Before she committed suicide she told her friend that she would rather die than marry and become a "slave". Ayat, the 3rd suicide had become despondent because her family was being persecuted by their neighbors. The townspeople were envious because Ayat's father made a good living working for Jews. They told him to quit but he refused saying he didn't hate Jews. Soon the family was shunned by the townspeople who even surrounded their home preventing them from leaving to go to work or shopping, etc. After Ayat's suicide, her father was fired from his job for having a suicide bomber daughter, and the family was once again on good terms with their neighbors. Andalib was the 4th suicide. She was a 21 year old seamstress obsessed with movie stars. After 2 female relatives were arrested for attempting suicide, she became obsessed with female suicide bombers. She committed suicide after getting confirmation from her handlers that she would become a "superstar" all over the Arab world after killing herself and others. Hiba is the final suicide mentioned. She had been raped by a retarded uncle when she was in her early teens and was so traumatized that she covered herself so that only her eyes showed whenever she left her home. Her mother tried to keep the rape quiet, much to Hiba's dismay. Ms. Victor also discusses several other women who attempted suicide or committed attacks upon Israelis, some with the motive of being in a place "safer" than their Palestinian homes: an Israeli jail. The author discusses the leading terrorist organizations in Palestine and their evolving views on female suicide bombers. One of the spokesmen for a terrorist organization said that since the bombers tended to be from families that were comparatively well-off, it proved they were not committing suicide because they were depressed by their poverty. However, the same is true of America; it is the upper and middle class person who tends to commit suicide, not the poor. Perhaps the poor are already used to adversity and have learned to cope with it. This book is the story of a tragic waste of life. After all the suicide and killing that has been done, what has been gained? A security fence.