Anat Berko holds a Ph.D. in criminology and served as lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces. She is a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and also conducts research for the National Security Council. She is currently a visiting professor at The George Washington University in Washington, DC.
She is the author of The Path to Paradise, The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers.
Anat Berko visited Budapest and gave an interview about her views regarding suicide bombers. She said that suicide bombing is more than a police case; terrorism requires a different kind of solution.
Berko wrote her Ph.D about the controllers, about those who send men, women and children to death. She compared them morally to serial killers and petty criminals, the cultural background, language, nationality were the same. Controllers are totally different from these criminals; they can be described as people who give warfare and criminality a whole new prospective, a new color. The assignors measure their success in the numbers of victims, and they are competing each other. This is called psychological warfare.
The number of women suicide bombers are less than the number of men, however women are usually more “successful”. Anat Barko says that once she made an interview with a woman, who failed. She could not blow herself up because the image of her mother came into her mind. The only people who could stop children from killing themselves voluntarily are parents.
There was no suicide bombing in Israel since 2008. According to Barko there is still motivation, although a security wall had been built up. It is not possible to walk with a bomb in Israel anymore.
About those who fail a suicide-bombing mission Barko says, “after they are released from prison they will not try again. This is a one-time show. If he/she did not succeed, it was the will of Allah.
Source: hvg.hu
