Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
The In Jerusalem magazine which comes with the Friday Jerusalem Post has a "round-up of city affairs" called "This Week in Jerusalem." This past Friday, there was an item which read as follows (link seems to require payment):
The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, which is part of the Hebrew University, has found a link between suicide bombers and financial distress. According to the research findings, unemployment is a major factor that drives suicide bombers to implement their plans. Some people may have assumed that hatred was the cause, but it seems that unemployment and severe economic conditions are also behind the decision and the choice of targets in the attacks. The results of the research (on suicide bombers during 2002-2006) have been presented to the prime minister and the defense minister.
I was not able to find anything on this at the Truman Institute's website and thusfar they have not responded to my inquiry.
The columnist told me she took this from a 2010 book called "Palestinian and Israeli Public Opinion" and I have not read the actual research findings.
Anyway, it seems to me that the "findings" that show financial distress as the cause (or even a cause) of suicide bombings, is risible on the face of it. Consider:
We don't see suicide bombers coming from populations suffering financial distress, except as an Islamic political statement.
The bombers always seem to detonate themselves among their political enemies, not say among the economic oppressors within their own brethren.
Perhaps the research findings can be supported if we consider that a suicide bomber's family receives financial support from the Palestinian Authority itself and its assorted accomplices. But that is likely not cited by the research, because it would undermine their entire claim that there is no hate involved.
But I suppose we could assume that these findings were predetermined the moment the study was commissioned by an outfit with "Advancement of Peace" in its name.
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Comments:
Oct '11
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
I haven't read much on it either, but I've always thought that suicide bomber characteristics would be tough to peg down. Not only can you not interview them after the fact, but there probably aren't very many of them. Between 2003 and 2010 there were about 1800 reported suicide bombings in Iraq, which is a lot, but still small relative to the terrorist population, which may be rather fluid, and especially the general population. It seems like it may be a group that's so independent, few changes in conditions would affect its behavior. It would be like identifying a characteristic about serial killers - say, abusing animals - and trying to solve the animal abuse problem with strong support from PETA. Like you said, it seems like they're digging for the evidence to their conclusion. But I sympathize with that wishful thinking: it would great to hit two birds with one stone, especially when one could be tied to prosperity.
Edited on November 22, 2011 at 9:24amOct '11
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
These claim are always brought about because ''it makes sense'' and good emotional appeal, in fact isn't this part of the whole ''crime is a result of poverty'' excuse ?
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
I haven't looked at the research, but it's perfectly possible that there's an observable pattern that includes hatred and unemployment and x number of other variables. One doesn't preclude the other. Given that suicide bombers are committing suicide, you'd have to be determined not to ask the obvious questions to overrule, a priori, the idea that the traditional risk factors for suicide might be at play. Anything that can help form a more complete profile is probably useful.
Oct '10
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
Perhaps the correlation to prosperity mentioned by QBF can be traced by the decision of the Arab poohbahs, in 1948, to create a permanent "Palestinian" underclass. The longest ongoing "refugee" situation ever is a deliberate creation of the oil wealthy sheikdoms, undoubtedly intended to bring about the level of desperation which could result in the suicide bomber creation.
Once found to be an effective terrorism tool for Islamists against the Jews, it has bred imitators of it's success.
As for the prosperity solution, it is not unlike the solution to the American poverty underclass. And as with here, the poohbahs who control the situation will not willingly dispense with such a valuable tool.
Oct '11
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
raycon:
As for the prosperity solution, it is not unlike the solution to the American poverty underclass. And as with here, the poohbahs who control the situation will not willingly dispense with such a valuable tool.
I didn't know that about the Arabs leaders. Not that this disproves anything - like Claire said, there are a lot of factors at work, and each person is different - but it's always amazed me when prosperous and successful people take up arms to become suicide bombers. When you look at ordinary suicide rates here in the U.S., you see a lot of people that aren't suffering all that much, but take that step. A while back a friend recommended a piece in Cosmo that discussed suicidal women in their early 20's. These kind, successful, and attractive women just had something missing in their lives.
I wonder the same about suicide bombers; maybe what moves a street fighting terrorist to become a suicide bomber isn't all that different than what turns a person suicidal in general.
Edited on November 22, 2011 at 10:41pmMar '11
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
One thought exercise to show how pathetic (and irrelevant) this argument/study is; take it to its logical conclusion with a different example.
I am sure the same result would arise in America with the Ku Klux Clan during the first half of the 20th century. What if the variable was white instead of Poor/Unemployed. Then one could argue based on the “study” that being white leads to racisms therefore reducing the number of whites in America would combat racism.
Edited on November 22, 2011 at 11:18pmRe: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
Brian Clendinen: One thought exercise to show how pathetic (and irrelevant) this argument/study is; take it to its logical conclusion with a different example.
I am sure the same result would arise in America with the Ku Klux Clan during the first half of the 20th century. What if the variable was white instead of Poor/Unemployed. Then one could argue based on the “study” that being white leads to racisms therefore reducing the number of whites in America would combat racism.
· Nov 22 at 2:17pm
Edited on Nov 22 at 02:18 pm
Yes, correlation is not causation.
Dec '10
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
Whether they did so intentionally to obfuscate or unintentionally out of ignorance, it seems the people who performed the cited research confounded what motivates suicide bombing and what motivates a suicide bomber.
Suicide bombing is a tactic motivated by hate and by a willingness to use morally indefensible means toward a political end.
A suicide bomber -- an individual who straps on a bomb intending to blow himself and others up -- may have entirely different motivations from the individuals who planned the suicide bombing and provided the bomber with the explosives:
It's truly inane to suppose that studying the motivations of individual suicide bombers will somehow lead to undermining the motivations behind the use of the tactic.
Apr '11
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
The US has been suckered (or worse) into supporting this exercise in driving an entire people insane (I doubt even the Greeks had a name for it). It pays nearly half of the budget of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).
One more thing the Liberal Fascists won't have to apologize for.
Dec '10
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
Claire, If wasting an immense amount of time on extremely weak statistical correlations obscures the fact that Islamic Jihadist Ideology produces Homicide/Suicide attacks then a great deal of damage has been done. The microscopic amount of usefulness generated will be dwarfed by the obsenity of an Attorney General of the United States unable to make the one clear unequivocal correlation of Homicide/Suicide attacks to Jihadist psychosis. In hard physical science, as opposed to social science, the correlation coefficient is often dispensed with entirely and a coefficient of determination is used instead. In a few areas of social science such as transaction tracking in Economics the coefficient of determiniation is also used. I would suggest that the linkage of Homicide/Suicide attacks to Jihadism is so strong that it to could be easily assessed by a coefficient of determination.
We are not Gd. We do not have an infinite amount of time & money to do an infinite number of trivial studies on what we already have a clear handle. Get a grip.
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
From CNNMOney:
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
More CNNMoney:
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
There is a thread of belief among some analysts that it is a personal desire for revenge, rather than a frantic desire to escape a desperately poor existence, that motivates Palestinian suicide bombers. Here's Brendan O'Neill:
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
And here's The Economist, basically tossing the Truman Institute's premise out the window:
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
More from The Economist:
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
So are economic conditions relevant to terrorism or not? Hit it, Economist:
But hold up. Lest we be tempted by this inference to hurl terror-avoidance economic sustainability packages at Gaza:
Nov '10
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
There might be a weak correlation. But as you observe, suicide bombing and organized terror attacks like 9/11 are generally carried out by well-educated folks from reasonably comfortable families. The poorest Islamic areas tend to have the least Islamic terrorism. Consider the frequency with which muslim medical personnel in the west succumb to sudden jihad syndrome. Bin Laden was a millionaire; Zawahiri, a successful medical doctor. I fear that they had to waterboard the data to get a confession.
Re: Suicide Bombings, Financial Distress and Predetermined Research Findings
One of the details I remember hearing once about a suicide bomber after an attack was that she was a trained paramedic. The irony meter flies right off the charts here on a regular basis.