Following the collapse of Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria, jihadi terror groups are being refashioned and reconfigured across the Middle East.
Though there are evident and substantial differences between these groups, they all share a single overriding objective. This common objective is not geopolitical advantage or national self-determination, but “power over death.” Whatever else differentiates jihadi terror group ideologies and tactics from one another, all Islamist groups seek personal redemption through “sacred violence.”
In essence, jihadist terror is a convenient form of religious sacrifice. Moreover, the jihadi rallying cry, “We love death,” is common to both Sunni and Shia insurgents. In shrieking this perverse cry, no fundamental differences arise between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, Houthis in Yemen and Hamas/Fatah in Gaza/West Bank.
Nonetheless, all jihadi forces seek “martyrdom” in order not to die. This is the case even though virtually all terrorist leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah enthusiastically prescribe martyrdom for their followers, but not for themselves.
Despite the easily discoverable commonalities of jihadi terror, the evolution of Palestinian criminal violence against Israel displays a unique historical narrative. The original fraternity of Palestinian terrorist groups contained extraordinarily disparate bedfellows. At that time, Israel’s “liquidation” (the primal term used most frequently in the terrorist lexicon) justified all manner of indiscriminate harms. Virtually every Arab enemy of Israel was urged to join in the obligatory war against “Zionists.” Even Marxists and similarly flagrant “unbelievers” found welcome under the same operational tent.
Things are now different. The jihadi terrorist fight is now openly oriented to the idea of “holy war” as religious sacrifice. This unhidden orientation is relentless, persistent, and conspicuously barbarous. The October 7, 2023 Hamas rape and murder of Israeli and other noncombatants is the most obvious case in point. In explaining such egregious crimes, history deserves pride of place.
Speaking on official Palestinian Authority TV, on November 7, 2014, a senior Fatah official blessed all Islamic killers of Israelis: “Jerusalem needs blood in order to purify itself of Jews.” Two days later, on November 9, PA television honored these same killers as follows: “Greetings and honor to our heroic martyrs... We stand submissive and humbled by what you gave and sacrificed.” Then on November 14, the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs summarized in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “Jerusalem needs sacrifices and blood.”
BUT WHO, exactly are these prospective “martyrs?” The deepest roots of jihadi terror originate from cultures that embrace religious views of sacrifice. In these cultures, the purpose of sacrifice extends far beyond any presumed expectations of civic necessity. Rather, this rationale goes to the innermost heart of individual human fear; that is, to the palpable and universal dread of personal death.
Jihadi enticements are not hard to appreciate. The promised reward for those who sacrifice for jihad is salvation. Says the Qur’an (Sura 2:154): “Do not think that those who are killed in the way of Allah are dead, for indeed they are alive, even though you are not aware.”
In the Islamist Middle East, where theological doctrine divides humankind into the dar al-Islam (world of Islam) and the dar al-harb (world of war), acts of terror against “unbelievers” have long been defended as an expression of sacredness. For jihadi fighters, individual sacrifice ultimately derives from a feverishly hoped-for conquest of personal death. By adopting atavistic practices, the jihadist expects to achieve an otherwise unattainable immortality. Usually, there is also the expectation of a variety of more sensual or lascivious seductive benefits.
For jihadists, there are certain aspects of sacrificial terror that ought never to be overlooked. This two-sided nature of terror/sacrifice – the sacrifice of “The Jew” and the reciprocal sacrifice of “The Martyr” – is explicitly codified, within the Charter of Hamas and elsewhere, as a “religious problem.” Always, for the Islamist terrorist, the true enemy is “The Jew,” not “The Israeli.”
Earlier, Yasser Arafat’s appointed clergy, preaching on the Temple Mount, affirmed an immutable religious precept: “Palestinians spearhead Allah’s war against the Jews. The dead shall not rise, until the Palestinians shall kill all the Jews....”
Today, when jihadists of any type plan specific tactics of suicide terrorism – that is, when leaders give orders from Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon, Yemen, etc. for “believers” to make sacrifices of themselves – they leave nothing about immortality to chance. Because dying in the act of killing “infidels,” “apostates,” and “unbelievers” is certain to buy freedom from the penalty of dying, these jihadists can conquer mortality by killing themselves.
IT’S A grand and incomparable bargain, one that deserves much closer note in Jerusalem (and Washington). For Palestinian jihadists in particular, homicide-suicide represents not only the transient “death” of heroic Muslims, but also the required annihilation of a religiously despised Jewish state. Accordingly, the promised bargain is a “win-win” for all jihadi “warriors.”
Root problem of terror in the Middle East
Though not yet widely understood, the root terrorism problem in the Middle East is jihadi death-fear and the consequent compulsion to sacrifice certain despised “others.” In turn, this often-overriding compulsion stems from the doctrinal belief that killing unbelievers and being killed by unbelievers represents the best available path to personal immortality.
To counter such belief, Israel must think in terms of desacralizing its relentless Islamist adversary and convincing him/her that ritualistic murders of Jews will lead not to paradise and limitless lascivious pleasures, but, as the Qur’an also says, to untold “terrors of the grave.”
For all jihadi terrorists, the violence-based struggle against Israel and America has never been about land, “settlements” or “self-determination.” Always, it has been about God and immortality. In this regard, Israel and the United States should be reminded that there can be no greater “political” power on earth than “power over death.” This is the case even though any such ultimate power is obviously a contradiction in terms.
In the ongoing reconfiguration of Islamist terror groups following Bashar Assad’s fall in Syria, all of these groups will share a presumed stake in expanding terror violence. Going forward, therefore, Israeli planners will need to factor such adversarial commonality into their counter-terrorism protocols. Pertinent decision-makers will need to understand that transient name changes of regional jihadi organizations are of secondary significance. Whatever the apparent differences between HTS and its predecessors, all groups will continue to embrace terrorism as religious sacrifice.
The writer is an emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University and the author of many books and scholarly articles on international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; second edition, 2018).