BODIES IN PAIN
THE RADIOLOGY OF SUICIDE BOMBING TERRORISM
By Louis Rene Beres, Ph.D. and Michael L. Messing, M.D.
What, exactly, does the Palestinian suicide bomber really seek?
Above all, he wants to transform pain into power. In maiming, burning and
exploding Israeli men, women and children, this terrorist has already learned
from the torturer. He 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 own body, and exploits it to
affect the behaviour of others. A grotesque form of theatre that draws political
power from the innermost depths of privacy, suicide bombing terrorism
manipulates and amplifies pain within the individual
victim's body for the express purpose of influencing others who live outside
that body.
Violating the inviolable, it declares with unspeakable cruelty that everyone's
most personal horror can be made public.
Consider the personal horror. During the routine rotation of a radiologist in a
busy city hospital, the variety of patient problems (e.g.,pneumonia, broken
wrists, heart failure, abdominal pain, pregnancy, etc) reveal just another
difficult workday.
But things are now very different in Shaare Zedek and Hadassah Hospitals in
Jerusalem, and in many
other hospitals scattered across Israel. With the latest wave of suicide
bombings, unique and hideous trauma, evident on radiographic images, 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 millimetres to whole nails, grotesquely embedded in the
victims' bodies - literally from head to foot. What had been created originally
for constructive purposes has been transformed by Arab terrorists into the very
deadliest of destructive projectiles.
Nails, screws, nuts and ball-bearings are packed by the suicide bombers into
their explosive vests to maximize their lethal effects and to inflict
unimaginable pain and suffering on innocent bodies. These maliciously
transformed objects are propelled with the force of bullets, penetrating skin,
flesh and bone with a furious indifference to civilized human behaviour. The
nails fly head first, presenting themselves in a strangely surreal yet orderly
arrangement within the victims' bodies. Many are embedded "only" to the depth of
their entrance sites. Others burrow their way in more deeply, and lodge under
the skin where the
examining physician can actually touch and feel their alien presence. Others
must be removed after hours of meticulous exploration. Still others enter the
body far deeper, perforating and lacerating vital organs at random.
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 - what would
ordinarily be considered a major injury - is now taken as a blessing for these
merely "wounded" victims of Arab terrorism.
Although some of the victims recover physically and return to a "normal" life,
many more require a lifetime of ongoing rehabilitation. Some are assuredly
impaired permanently. And all suffer serious psychological effects that need 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 all over 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 thoroughly
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 Dr. Adel Sadeq, Chairman of the
Arab Psychiatric Association, "they are all plunderers." There is no longer any
time for the civilized world to transform this murderously indiscriminate
belief; no American-supported "Road Map" to a Palestinian state will reduce Arab
terror. After all, even a secular Arab psychiatrist says openly and proudly that
"The only real means of dealing with Israel is those who blow themselves up."
But an urgent and immediate effort must at least be made to recognize and
acknowledge the truly dreadful human toll of suicide bombing
terrorism.
LOUIS RENE BERES, Professor of Political Science at
Purdue, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of twelve
major books dealing with terrorism and international law.
MICHAEL L. MESSING, M.D. is a radiologist in Highland Park, Illinois.
Trained at Cook County Hospital and Northwestern University in Chicago, he has
spent time in Israel rendering medical assistance
to victims of Arab terror.
[Home] [About Us] [Chronicle] [The Victims] [Projects] [Articles] [Yizkor]
