In Maiming Israeli Bodies, Bombers Maim the Soul

What, exactly, does the Palestinian suicide bomber really seek? Above all, he wants to transform Jewish pain into Arab power. In maiming and burning Jewish men, women and children, this terrorist reasons that pain, to be purposeful, must point convincingly toward the victim’s death but that even survivors must suffer terribly.

In the fashion of the torturer, the Palestinian suicide bomber takes what is usually private and incommunicable--the pain contained within the boundaries of the sufferer’s body--and exploits it to affect the behavior of others.

Consider the personal horror. During the routine rotation of a radiologist in a busy city hospital, a broad variety of patient problems is seen. But things are now very different in Israeli hospitals.

With the wave of suicide bombings, unique and hideous trauma has become a regular part of the Israeli physician’s daily practice.

X-rays of suicide bombing victims often show hundreds of metallic fragments, ranging in size from millimeters to whole nails, grotesquely embedded in the victims’ bodies--literally from head to foot. Like so many others across history’s killing fields, Arab terrorists have transformed simple devices created for constructive purposes--in this case, nails--into the deadliest of destructive projectiles.

Nails, screws, nuts and ball bearings are packed by the suicide bombers into their explosive vests to maximize lethal effects and to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering on innocent Jewish bodies. These maliciously transformed objects are propelled with the force of bullets, penetrating skin, flesh and bone with a furious indifference to civilized human behavior.

The nails fly head first, presenting themselves in a strangely surreal yet orderly arrangement within the victims’ bodies. Many are embedded shallowly. Others burrow their way in more deeply and lodge under the skin, where the examining physician can actually touch and feel their alien presence. Some take hours of meticulous exploration to remove. Still others violate the body deeper, perforating and lacerating vital organs. CT scans of these victims’ heads show blood, air, metal and bone fragments displacing normal brain tissue.

The “lucky” patient who survives the initial explosive insult may often require extensive surgery to repair damaged organs. Others may sustain fractures, burns, amputations, vascular injuries, paralysis, blindness or brain damage. A collapsed lung or perforated colon--ordinarily considered a major injury--is taken as a blessing for such victims of terrorism.

Although some of the victims recover physically and return to a “normal” life, many more require a lifetime of rehabilitation. Some are impaired permanently.

And all suffer serious psychological harm that needs to be treated. Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety affect not only the victims of the attack but all of Israeli society. Anecdotal reports have indicated a dramatic rise in the use of prescription antidepressants and sedatives.

How could it be otherwise, in a society living under constant attack by those who cry out, “When the martyr dies a martyr’s death, he attains the height of bliss ... “?

The Palestinian “martyr’s” unheroic weapon has now literally and figuratively penetrated the hearts and souls as well as the bodies of an entire nation.

Too often, unfortunately, television and print media are unable or unwilling to transmit the full human measure of such penetration to viewers and readers.

The result is that too few people around the world are able to understand the true horror of the Palestinian suicide bomber. For them, Israeli “wounded” are little more than an anesthetized statistic, an abstract list of numbers that elicits barely a nodding sigh of concern.

For the Palestinian suicide bomber, violence and the sacred are intertwined. This homicidal terrorist believes unreservedly that there can be no greater glory for a Muslim than inflicting measureless pain upon all Jewish bodies.

“There are no Israeli civilians,” says Adel Sadeq, chairman of the Arab Psychiatric Assn. “They are all plunderers.” There is no longer any time for the civilized world to transform this murderously indiscriminate belief. After all, even a secular Arab psychiatrist, Sadeq, says openly and proudly that “the only real means of dealing with Israel is those who blow themselves up.”

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Louis Rene Beres, professor of political science at Purdue University, is the author of 12 books dealing with terrorism and international law. Michael L. Messing, a radiologist, is studying the medical effects of terrorism.