In 1972 three members of the Japanese Red Army carried out a notorious suicide attack on people gathered in one of the halls of Tel Aviv airport; they killed twenty people and wounded eighty. A few... Show moreIn 1972 three members of the Japanese Red Army carried out a notorious suicide attack on people gathered in one of the halls of Tel Aviv airport; they killed twenty people and wounded eighty. A few days after 11 September, a Swiss man killed several members of the regional parliament of Zug and then killed himself. These two examples are given in response to those narrow explanations of the phenomena of violence, death, martyrdom and suicide that see them in the light of the 'clash of civilizations', bearing in mind that only a very short space of time separates us from the American Unabomber, the Japanese Aum sect and Timothy McVeigh, all of whom were driven, respectively, by their anti-technology delusions, their rush to reach the millennium and their hatred of the federal government, to shorten the distance that separates life from death. Show less
