48
Friday, March 7, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
WHAT MAKES THEM
TI
Severe personality disorders characterize
many of the terrorists, and most are
aggressive and self-destructive as well.
BY HELEN DAVIS
Special to The Jewish News
Jerusalem — Within hours of the mas-
sacres at Rome and Vienna airports, a
photograph was flashed to newspapers
around the world. It showed a young
Arab, his face contorted with pain, being
subdued by an Italian policeman. His
three comrades-in-arms lay dead.
• Who are these young men and women
and what enables them to step outside the
norms of civilized behavior and slaughter
innocent bystanders — men, women and
children who might never have heard of
"the legitimate rights of the Palestinian
people?"
According to Dr. Ariel Merari, an expert
on international terrorism at the Tel Aviv
University's Center for Strategic Studies,
those who participate in such high risk
operations as hijackings, airport attacks
and raids into Israel have at least one
thing in common.
"A very high proportion have quite
severe personality disorders," he says. "In
studies made of terrorists captured during
such missions, it has been found that,
however different their backgrounds,
almost all demonstrated a very high level
of aggression combined with self-destruc-
tive tendencies — what the psychiatrists
call psychopathic and sociopathic ten-
dencies."
Many of the captured terrorists also
have criminal records before they join a
terror group and dedicate themselves to a
cause. "They tend not to get on in their
own societies; they are not necessarily
Helen Davis is a writer living in Israel.