Barbara Victor: Army of Roses

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Subtitled "inside the world of Palestinian women suicide bombers", this is a book that should be read by anyone with any feeling at all for the ongoing conflict in Israel and the occupied territories. "How can they do it?" we fleetingly wonder, appalled, as the images of young people with bombs strapped to their bodies flash across our screens.

Victor, who has reported for 20 years in the Middle East, investigates the "spreading psychosis of martyrdom", particularly looking at the women who have chosen to end their lives — and the lives of others — in this way.

In January 2002 Yasser Arafat called on women to join the fight against Israeli occupation; the same day 26-year-old Wafa Idris, as a member of a Red Crescent ambulance crew more used to saving lives than ending them, became the first woman to martyr herself, simultaneously killing one Israeli and wounding 100 others. Victor profiles Idris, and the five other female bombers who followed her (as well as many others who tried and failed), and concludes that there are crucial, chilling differences in the motivations of female bombers (shihada) and their male counterparts.

The women were courted and cajoled into committing these acts because of the essential hopelessness of their lives, not just as members of a sub-jugated people, but because of their untenable position as women in a conservative Islamic society. They had all suffered dramatic disappointments in their ambitions and had, literally, nothing to lose. They were easily persuaded that by becoming shihada they would achieve success and honour in the eyes of their family and wider community, and a place in Heaven. It is, Victor says, "exploitation of women taken to a lethal extreme ... Better to die than live in humiliation".

In a wider sense, she gives insights into the culture of death that permeates Palestinian society and describes the "fatal cocktail" of circumstances that leads to these acts. A must-read, told with sympathy for all civilians touched by such horror.

Robinson, $34.95

* Margie Thomson is the NZ Herald's books editor