Web Extra
Political psychologist Jerrold Post listened to a Palestinian terrorist nonchalantly discuss how he murdered a Jewish woman on a hijacked Egyptian flight, but this meeting was just part of the job for the GW professor.
Post, director of the GW political psychology program and a former CIA profiler, discussed this interview and other examples at a talk with 40 people at the Elliott School of International Affairs Thursday night. The event – The Mind of the Terrorist: When Hatred is Bred in the Bone – was held to promote Post’s latest book, “The Mind of the Terrorist.”
“When he talked about ‘blowing her brains out’ he sounded like he was taking the trash out,” Post said of the terrorist, Mohammad Rezaq. “He wasn’t killing people. He was killing the ‘enemy.'”
But Post said not all terrorists are fanatical and crazy.
“Terrorists are psychologically normal,” he said. “These are frustrated, alienated individuals, loners who find a sense of community in their group.”
Describing the downtrodden lives of Palestinians, he explained that the lack of opportunities for Palestinians leads them to feel frustrated and alienated. Post said it is the charismatic leaders of terrorists groups who recruit those people and direct their emotions toward a supposed “cause.”
“The ’cause’ is not the cause,” Post said. “The cause and justification and rationalization for these frustrated, alienated individuals is to have that frustration pointed at an outside enemy.”
He also discussed cultures that reward expressions of hatred in children, whose personalities are still developing. In a slideshow presentation, Post included many images of children, some as young as five, dressed in fatigues and wielding weapons.
“They are not being trained to be terrorists,” he said. “They are trained to be revolutionaries.”
Sharing excerpts from his interviews with an incarcerated Palestinian terrorist, Post read aloud the words of one young man.
“I belong to a generation of occupation,” Post said quoting a young terrorist. “My family (members) are refugees from the 1967 war. War and refugee status were the seminal events that formed my political consciousness and provided me the incentive to do all I can do to gain our legitimate rights.”
He added, “Nothing fanatic or insane in that.”
Post then shared translated excerpts from the Quran that showed that suicide is forbidden for Muslims.
“Yet when we talk to the suicide commanders and say, ‘You’re doing this in the name of Allah but how can you justify suicide terrorism when the Quran strictly forbids suicide?’ They respond, ‘This is not suicide.this is martyrdom and self-sacrifice,'” Post said.
Apart from Islamic terrorism, Post discussed examples of Jewish terrorism such as the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and other terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army of Northern Ireland and the Spanish ETA.
Doga Chigdenoglu, a senior in the Elliott School concentrating on conflict and security, said the was talk highly engaging.
“This is exactly what I want to do in the future. It was definitely interesting and a different approach to see terrorists’ minds,” Chigdenoglu said.
Julie Wronski, who is taking “Political Violence and Terrorism” with Post, said she has heard aspects of the talk in her various lectures and also read his book.
“The book is really good. The slides did a really good job [providing] an overview of everything,” said Wronski, who is a certificate student in the political psychology program. “The book goes into case study examples of some of the groups he talked about. He does tell a lot of personal stories too.”
