ABSTRACT
The tragic events of September 11, 2001 sparked a wave of publications about suicide bombing, a subject that attracted little scholarly attention in the 1980s and 1990s. A politically motivated suicide defined as deliberate self-killing for the advancement of a collective cause accompanied by a request, for response and a call to action. A global diffusion of suicide protest as a protest repertoire began in 1963 and of suicide bombing as a military strategy in 1981. The rise of suicide protest can be traced back to the self-immolation of the monk Thich Quang Duc in 1963, whose spectacular suicide provoked worldwide reactions and contributed tremendously to the overthrow of the South Vietnamese regime later. In the case of Hamas, it is interesting to observe that the group not only regards self-inflicted death as martyrdom, but also engages in psychological discourse, referring to scientific research about suicide bombers. Media orchestrations of politically motivated suicides have always adapted to new developments.
