ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of suicidal terrorism has attracted increasing attention in recent years, due to the prominence of events like the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi (1991), the bombing of the U.S. Marine Headquarters in Beirut (1983), and the successful attacks on Israeli targets. Although some articles (e.g., Taylor and Ryan, 1988; Merari, 1990) shed light on aspects of this kind of warfare, no theory of suicidal terrorism has yet been advanced. This results, probably, from the various writers’ tendency to view suicidal terrorism as an isolated phenomenon, distinct from other manifestations of self- and other-victimization. In my opinion this view is mistaken. Despite the obvious external differences, the Tamil girl who assassinated Rajiv Ghandi was basically similar to, say, Charlotte Corday, the French girl who assassinated Marat knowing full well that she would be guillotined; or to Bagrov, the Ukrainian youth who assassinated Stolypin at the Kiev opera; or to the German youths who murdered Rathenau—all happily anticipating their own deaths (Loomis, 1964; Paustovskii, 1967; Fromm, 1973). 1
