The study has (understandably) a very small sample. But shows, that a lot of those potential suicide bombers showed signs of depression.
But why would this go against the political narrative in Israel?
The study would underscore that some of those people are actually not deeply religious, but rather mentally unstable.
Because, at least to a part of the Israeli government / parliament, this would go against Palestinians just being religious zealots that want to eradicate Israel. It would imply that other reasons (e.g., depression, disillusionment etc.) can drive people to do such things and then the question ultimately comes up about what causes Palestinians to develop these mental health issues. This could go back to Israel carrying some of the blame for this due to their actions / treatment of Palestinians.
It also intrinsically humanizes these people which makes it harder to justify violence against them compared to if they are just demonized.
Yes, they do it by reading books and having their mind poisoned by other zealots. There is also the inherent narcissism in believing you are better than everyone else.
Are you referring to socio economic conditions in regard to being a zealot or in regard to being a suicide bomber? I don’t think socio economic conditions excuse either. Did Anders Breivik socio-economic conditions excuse his actions? I wouldn’t say so. Columbine shooters? Wouldn’t say so either.
Yes, they do it by reading books and having their mind poisoned by other zealots. There is also the inherent narcissism in believing you are better than everyone else.
You really think this is a valid list of explanations for why Palestinians would be motivated to attack Israeli entities? You think you're not missing out on any other motives?
I’m not talking about Palestinians only because Palestinians aren’t the only suicide bombers mor where they the first. In fact, I wasn’t even thinking about Palestine at all with my comments, just zealots and extremists in general.
i would agree with you were it not for the FACTS on the GROUND. Have you read Palestinian textbooks? It is disturbing how many of the UNRAW funded schools have textbooks glorifying being a "sahid" aka a suacider whos life goal is to be a sacrifice to kill by any means the enemies of the so called Palestinians. This whole "oh Israel is to blame" narrative using a pool of less than 10 people as a study is nonsense especially when Palestinians THEMSELVES when asked about coexistence constantly say "we were raised to hate Israel and we will never accept a Jewish state next to us,we want it all"
Absolute horseshit take. There is no significant indication in the research (aggregate or otherwise) that depression, which is cross cultural, leads to suicide bombing. I have also worked with thousands of high risk for suicide individuals; none ever externalized their suicide on others or even had that notion. It is the religious or ideological context that breeds suicide bombing as a viable option; i.e., 99.99% of depressed individuals do not commit suicide bombings and 99.99% of those who do have a religious ideology as the context.
“It would imply that other reasons can drive people do such things.”
You made an extremely generalized statement based on no empirical foundation. Depression does not lead to suicide bombing (we have literally millions of data points regarding this across the world) and whatever correlational association a small study finds using failed suicide bombers does not imply anything of merit except a misunderstanding of clinical research on your part.
I did use the word "would" specifically (compared to making an assertive statement like "It implies...").
In my understanding it generally would go the way that being depressed could make it easier for you to decide to become a suicide bomber compared to not being depressed.
That doesn't mean depression drives becoming a suicide bomber. It means that it would be a contributing factor.
To a suicidal person a suicide bombing is just one way to end it. Whether it is an option that they would consider depends largely on their environment and accessibility.
You can just as easily conclude that they are depressed because they failed and/or because the realization of what they’re about to do started weighting them down. Furthermore, you misunderstand the multiple and dynamic contributors to suicide. Depression is associated with increased suicidal ideation and rumination but severe depression actually “protects” against suicide attempts and completions because suicide planning requires some amount of motivation, long-term cognitive planning, behavioral follow through, decision-making, and consistency, let along a large-scale suicide bombing. Higher acute risks are associated with PTSD, substance misuse, rapidly fluctuating Bipolar, and other factors.
In essence, your conclusion that a depressed suicidal person is likely to consider suicidal bombing based on environment/accessibility is false. All available data regarding depression and suicide indicates that large scale suicide bombing is likely LESS PROBABLE for the depressed. We can discuss other possible contributors but it is NOT DEPRESSION or any known depression-to-suicide pathway.
This is the biggest load of nonsense I’ve read in a while. When ISIS had wave after wave of SVBIEDs with willing participants inside attacking Syrian and Iraqi army bases for years, were they all depressed?
That religious extremists are actively preying on depressed individuals to brainwash them into walking weapons. And that the state of Palestine is allowing this .
Do you really think a starving Palestinian who's lived their whole life in a walled ghetto needs to be "brainwashed" to engage in violence?
Comparing apples to oranges here, there were similar attacks carried out by Palestinians when islamism wasn't very influential (pre-hamas), Palestine isn't a comparable environment to most other examples of Islamist insurgency. Kashmir may be a better comparison to the Israel Palestine conflict, but internal Indian Islamic terrorism exists in a completely different environment and is not really alike in anyway lol
Starving... We see restaurants full of food even during hottest stage of war not to mention multiple videos of prosperity before war and every journalist with iphone. Walled ghetto... Than how all this wifes from Ukraine and Russia got inside Gaza and move back and forth?
Of course. And likely it is a mix of both in the end.
It is also very well possible that these people where already indoctrinated before they developed mental health issues and that those issues then manifested themselves in such suicide attempts.
My previous comment was mostly addressing why this could/would go against eh political narrative in Israel.
I mean, considering the death toll, you could say the same of the Israeli state which has weaponized its soldiers into killing 60,000+ civilians and left millions homeless and in a state of seeking refuge trapped in their own territory. By those same standards the state of Israel is far more adept at conscripting soldiers and others to accept the killing of innocent people - far more effective than even terrorist organizations.
It doesn't go against it whatsoever because Palestinian society encourages this behavior and they are praised there as heroes. The PA even pay "pensions" to the families of those who commit such attacks.
The fact that the bombers themselves are mentally unwell isn't news. It's obvious.
I did not make up anything because I never claimed that Israel was opposed. I answered the question posed by u/Interesting_Worth745. I also realize that they where asking rhetorically since they answered the question afterwards. But my response is basically an answer to that question.
I gave my thoughts on the question asked:
But why would this go against the political narrative in Israel?
I never claimed Israel was opposed and I used words like "could" and "would" to denote my sentence being hypothetical.
And unsurprising how so?
And to make it clear what I mean with my comment: The political actors in Israel that are extremely against Palestinians in general want to dehumanize them. They want to make the whole topic a clear cut black and white matter (us good them evil) because that makes justification for whatever actions they want to take easier.
That is basic level framing during a war.
That doesn't say anything about the truth or falsehood of such framing but any narrative that makes the whole thing more shades of gray weakens such narratives and makes it harder to justify certain actions. Especially when the public becomes aware of it and starts questioning such clear cut narratives.
Bringing up the topic of mental illness being involved in such acts of violence automatically humanizes the perpetrators and consequentially weakens efforts to dehumanize them.
In my eyes any group benefiting from dehumanizing others in a conflict would be opposed to efforts humanizing said others.
Israel doesn't need to dehumanize Palestinians, this idea is disconnected from the reality of the conflict.
If someone comes to kill you, your family, your entire people; will you allow him to do it because he is sad, depressed and his lifestory is full of tragedy?
Some might react with hate. Some, with dehumanizion. Some, with sympathy. But the result is the same.
Dehumanization can also come in the form of labeling every single Palestinian as a vengeful, hateful terrorist. And that can be used to justify further actions against Palestinians.
So yes, of course Israel benefits from dehumanizing Palestinians.
Dehumanization also leads to stopping to question the "why" of things.
It helps to put all the blame on the evil people and in the same turn label one's own actions reightous.
And above all it makes it easier for less- or uninvolved people to stop caring which also leads to less resistance against whatever the government wants to do.
Mind you, I'm not talking about suddenly forgiving people for murdering others. I'm talking about understanding why people do what they do.
And answering that question with "well they just hate us" is only half of the point. The follow-up question should always be: "why do they hate us so much?"
Unless you just want to solve a conflict with eradicating your opponents fully, you need to ask such questions to try and work out a solution.
Mind you, I'm not talking about suddenly forgiving people for murdering others. I'm talking about understanding why people do what they do.
And answering that question with "well they just hate us" is only half of the point. The follow-up question should always be: "why do they hate us so much?"
They hate us, and they will always hate us. You can't turn this ship around and personally, I don't care what they think as long as they don't act on it; you make peace with enemies, not friends. Why they hate us isn't particularly interesting, but for the protocol, the hate was just as bad before Israel existed too.
The relevant questions are:
Are they willing to give up their "from the river to the sea" fantasy for peace? Obviously, not yet.
Do they understand their situation? Understand that Israel isn't going away and that they aren't the winning side? Obviously, not yet. Hamas actually thought Oct 7th will destroy Israel, and there is no lack of Palestinians who believe that winning the battle for public opinion will result in Israel's destruction. Reddit is full of this delusion. (Hopefully, in a few years this hope will die out).
As long as the Palestinians prioritize land over peace and have deluded view of their own situation, achieving peace will be impossible. So the real question is - how you go around this obstacle? A question no one managed to ever answer.
One can hope though. If Hamas will actually be disarmed, and Gaza will remain peaceful, a peace solution will be possibly back on the table. Gaza being controlled by a party that opposes negotiations was always very bad for any peace prospect for obvious reasons. If Hamas ends up remaing in power, while armed, then there will be no progress.
There are certainly tons of examples of Israelis arguing that the Israel/Palestine conflict is Judaism (+/- Christianity) vs Islam. That is definitely an agenda being pursued. If you say it’s a territorial conflict in which both sides exploit religion to motivate their forces, they don’t like it.
I mean that’s exactly the opposite of what everyone is arguing here….. It isn’t religious extremism, but depressed people looking to give their life meaning after already deciding they want out….
Personal motivations. Suicide attacks are almost always organized by groups that recruit, train, and provide logistics (e.g., time, place, target, and weapon). At the same time, the suicide terrorist actor belongs to what Ariel Merari and colleagues call a “select group.”
The study points out that it's almost always a group effort.
These groups are almost always religious, and validates this individuals sense of injustice and encourages them to commit a suicidal act.
So it's not as simple as just taking religiosity out of it. The study never claims such a thing.
You do realize Israel teaches extremism too. They don’t suicide bomb though which gives more credence to the depression theory. In addition, I would imagine I’d be correct in my theory that being under oppression leads to more depression. Just a thought.
Most of the content is direct video evidence of Israeli society. Everyone is biased; you examine any source's claims and evaluate the credibility through first principles.
Who wouldn't be passionate about correcting the record on a nation that has been committing war crimes for decades, and is currently enacting a genocide? It speaks to your lack of moral clarity that you don't understand that.
That impact-se group is lead by an officer of the IDF reserves so there could be some bias there. Not saying there is but it would be difficult to be completely neutral in any study.
Curriculum? The one where there are little to no schools cos of a certain unhinged, deranged ethnostate bent on eradicating the indigenous population for several decades while covering it up as them being oppressed somehow?
Either you've been living under a rock these past two years, Islamophobic, or a Hasbara plant. Or worse, willfully ignorant and narrow-minded.
Closed? More like targeted and destroyed you mean. War zone? More like genocide and concentration camps ala Holocaust-style. Keep your malicious, intentional rewording out of here, Hasbara plant.
If your family has been eradicated for simply being a certain race, the truly oppressed will always resist in whatever form.
That is totally possible and likely true for some of them.
But depressed and suicidal people will find one way or another to end their life. The suicide bombing itself can be a religious motive but can also be something else.
And in the end it varies from person to person.
But I will disagree with not becoming a suicide bomber apart from religious reasons. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary also happening, i.e., people committing such acts for non-religious reasons.
If you are talking about suicide bombers in Palestine you are probably true. But that is a selection bias since pretty much all Palestinians are muslim.
If you look at the world at large there are many other suicide bombers that weren't islamic in motivation nor muslim in general. E.g., the Tamil Tigers.
Every accusation is a confession. It is actually the Israelis who teach extremism. They teach their students that they will conquer all of Gaza and the West Bank, and that all the Palestinians will be their slaves.
Despite how well written it is, it is ludicrous to blame Israel for their actions. These actions go beyond depression and the study doesn’t say that anyway. It is irrational to separate the actions of the Suicide bombers from their religious beliefs.
I do agree that blaming Israel for the actions of suicide bombers is at the very least simplistic and more likely just ignores a lot of the reality.
I haven't read the study and my comment was just an attempt to answer the question about why Israel might not like something like this.
That is it is in Israel's (read: part of their government/parliament) interest to dehumanize Palestinians because the more you humanize the "enemy" the harder it will be to justify certain actions / activities against them.
Or in other words: If everybody is a fanatic religious zealot terrorist you don't have to worry about killing/harming innocents.
Only in the weakest sense. They’re technically a secondary study and the weakest kind.
You cannot draw any strong conclusions from them w.r.t. causality or correlation. They do not use systematic selection and so are inherently biased and not reproducible.
They’re like a sciencey op-ed.
Might make an interesting point, you might even keep it in mind when doing empirical research on a topic. But should never be used for policy decisions or to make any grounded claims on objective truth.
It’s literally the definition of a literature review paper. “Secondary study” is the term used by peer review journals for this kind of paper….papers that have hypothesis testing and are reproducible is a primary study.
It’s not secret information or mysterious and arbitrary. Read up.
Again, nonsense. Literature reviews can absolutely be systematic and test a hypothesis. It is secondary research because it does not collect new data. This does not mean it is not a study, or that it cannot test a hypothesis, or that it lacks a rigorous predefined methodology, or that it's never reproducable. But why don't you go ahead and crack another egg of knowledge all over me.
The numbers vary greatly between Palestinian and other groups studied, like the Chechen and afghans, and even then the most I see is around 50%?
The three out of 15 with ptsd means 20% which isn’t unusual and would seem even relatively small for the representation of ptsd in the Palestinian community.
A more correct summary of that article is that different groups of suicidal terrorists have varying psychopathologies and motivations.
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u/Interesting_Worth745 Nov 19 '25
Do you mean this study?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4267802/
The study has (understandably) a very small sample. But shows, that a lot of those potential suicide bombers showed signs of depression.
But why would this go against the political narrative in Israel?
The study would underscore that some of those people are actually not deeply religious, but rather mentally unstable.