Mdm Najar’s suicide was resulted of alienation and revolution of workers

According Karl Marx, Mdm Najar become a suicide bomber because of alienation and the revolution of workers resulted from economic struggles between the territories disputes Palestine and Israel. Marx accounted for alienation in terms of property relations and the division of labor. The economy he held was central to the understanding of human life. He argues that the existence of private property divides people into social classes. The basic class division was that between the property-owners and propertyless workers. The property-owning class benefits at the expense of the propertyless and this leads the classes to struggle over the distribution of economics resources.

Structure of Society by Karl Marx

In this case study, the Palestine is the “propertyless worker” and the Israel is property owners. According to historical background, Between the First and Second World Wars, the British authorities ruled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. On 14 May 1948, the British mandate ended and the State of Israel was proclaimed. A war between Israel and Arab armies followed during which more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled and became refugees.

Two parts of mandate Palestine remained outside Israel: the Gaza Strip, which came under Egyptian administration and the eastern part adjacent to the Jordan River. The latter was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and became known as the West Bank. Following a war between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, as well as Syria's Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, which was later returned to Egypt.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been unable to conclude a permanent peace agreement because of disagreements over key issues such as the respective territories of Israel and the proposed state of Palestine; the right to return of Palestinian refugees; the future of Jerusalem; and the future of Israeli settlements within the Occupied Territories.

Marx saw societies as social systems that could be divided into two quite distinct parts: the base and the superstructure. The economy and class relations comprised what he called the material base or substructure of society. The base always involves particular mode of production. By this term, Marx referred to the technical and human resources of production and the specific property relations and division of labour under which they are used. This economic base is the foundation upon which a superstructure of political, legal and customary social institution is built.

In this case, the capitalist society is the Israelis because of the extra territories they have, they are able to build more plants, workshops, and factories in which they employed large numbers of workers. They generated profits for themselves through a system of market exchange and the employment of wage labour from the Palestine Eventually they are the ruling classes of the Palestine.

Replacing Intellectual Forces

Henceforth, they are responsible for the alienation, exploitation, and oppression of the Palestines who actually produced the good that provided them with their profits. The Hamas political party rallying the population in Palestine to make them conscious of the alienation by replacing the “intellectual force” by the Capitalist Class (Israel) in introducing Islamic teachings such as fulfilling Jihad (meaning to strive or struggle in the way of God) Accordingly to Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (a Islamic scholar), he divides Jihad as a warfare in two parts

1) Against injustice and oppression.

2) Against the rejecters of truth in Islam after it has become evident to them.

as a stepping stone to proclaim back the territories to abolish alienation, exploitation and oppression to stable a new and more advanced form of communist production as part of God’s will in Islam context to bring peace and harmonious living for the divine chosen Palestine.

Title: Grandmother in first Hamas suicide attack in two years.

Date: 25^th November 06

Sources: Channelnewasia

1. The mother of nine and grandmother of 41 became the oldest Palestinian suicide bomber at the age of 57, selecting as her target troops operating near her northern Gaza home in Jabaliya, seeking to curb near-daily rocket attacks on Israel.

2. The operation came two weeks after the radical faction threatened to resume suicide bombings in response to a botched Israeli shelling in the Gaza town of Beit Hanun that killed 19 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

3. Najar was shown in a clip from a pre-taped video message aired on mainstream television stations, wearing a Hamas bandana in addition to a white veil and carrying a heavy kalashnikov, fighter-style in her arms.

4. "I am the martyr Fatima Najar from the town of Jabaliya. I work for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades and I sacrifice myself for God, the nation, the Al-Aqsa (mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest Muslim site)," she said.

5. Relatives said Najar left behind seven sons and two daughters, plus some 41 grandchildren, but insisted they were proud of her "martyrdom," which daughter Azhar said was a direct response to the Beit Hanun shelling.

6. "She did this operation in response to the Beit Hanun massacre. She was very moved by what happened," said Azhar, speaking from the family home in Jabaliya where relatives came to congratulate Najar's nearest and dearest.

7. Azhar also said her mother had taken part in a daring rescue operation, staged by Palestinian mothers and wives, who acted as human shields to free more than a dozen gunmen holed up in a Beit Hanun mosque on November 3.

8. "We are really happy. It's a big operation. She told us last night that she would do a suicide operation... We are proud," said Zuheir, Najar's 20-year-old son. "'I don't want anything, only to die a martyr.' That's what she said."

9. Najar was the second Palestinian woman to blow herself up in the northern Gaza this month, following a November 6 attack claimed by Islamic Jihad.

Suicide is not just an individualistic act.

According to Durkheim, social forces existing outside of the individual shaped the likelihood that a person would commit suicide. Suicides rates were therefore social facts. He demonstrated this by showing how suicides rates varied from one group to another from one social situation to another. Some of the main variations that he identified were as follows:

• Religion. Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics within the country and from country to country.
• Family relationships. Those people who are married were more unlikely to commit suicide compare to single, windowed or divorced. The suicide rate for married women was lower than that for single women only if they had children.
• War and peace. The suicide rate dropped in time of war, not only in victorious but also in defeated countries. Thus, Germany defeated in France in war of 1870 but the suicide rate fell in both countries.
• Economic crisis. Suicide rated rose at times of economics crisis. The increasing poverty would send up the suicide rate but however when economies boomed, suicide rates also rose therefore it’s concluded that the sudden changes in them that caused suicide rates to rise.

Social solidarity and the four types of suicide.

Therefore suicide cannot be explained solely in terms for the psychology of the individual. Durkheim’s theory of suicide was based on the idea that it was the degree of social solidarity that explained the variations in suicide rates. He distinguished between two aspects of social connection, which he called integration and regulations. Integration refers to the strength of the individual’s attachment to social groups. Regulation refers to the control of individual desires and aspirations by group norms or rules of behavior. This led him to identify four types of suicide.

1. egoistic suicide

· Resulted from weak integration of the individual that we have shown he described as ‘egoism’. The higher suicide rate of Protestants is one example of it. Protestantism is a less integrative religion than Catholicism, for it places less emphasis on collective rituals and emphasizes the individual’s direct relationship with God.

2. anomic suicide

· Resulted from the lack of regulation that Durkheim described as anomie. Durkheim believed that people would be content if their needs and passions were regulates and controlled, for this would keep their desires and their circumstances in balance with each other. For examples changes brought by economics change or divorce might upset the normal regulation of a person’s life breaks down.

3. altruistic suicide

· It’s the opposition of egoistic suicide. Social bonds are too strong, as the people set litlle value on themselves as individuals, or they obediently sacrifice themselves to the requirements of the group.

4. fatalistic suicide

· It’s the opposition of altruistic suicide. Regulations were excessively high to oppress the individual.

Causally explanation and functional analysis

Durkheim recognized that egoism and anomie were often found together. For example, a divorce occurred, this both isolated people and left their lives in an unregulated and without much integration unstable social solidarity state from close companionship.

Mental states and feelings of individuals

By this, he demonstrated not only that the behavior, feelings and mental states of the individual was social. Thus Durkheim argues that the social isolation characteristic of egoistic suicide results in apathy or depression. Anomic suicide is associated with a much more restless condition of irritation, disappointment, or frustration. When alack of regulations leads and ambition to get out of control, people become upset and frustrated by their inability to achieve them. Altruistic suicide is generally accompanied by an energy and passion quite opposite to the apathy of egoism. Durkheim did not discuss the psychological state characteristic fatalistic suicide but it would seem to involve a mood of acceptance and resignation.

The evaluation of the Hamas suicide attack

According to Durkheim, Mdm Najar is very unlikely to commit an egoistic, anomic suicide and fatalistic suicide as she’s a Muslim and had many children stated in (4) and (5) respectively in the newspaper article, Islam is a religion that place strongly on collective rituals such as having mass prayer in the mosques, doing 5 times prayer daily facing Jerusalem. In (3) she was in shown in clip for her willingness to die for her faith and her people. She must have considered the consequence for her death very carefully leaving his behind seven sons and two daughters, plus some 41 grandchildren despite the responsibilities and regulations that she need to bore for her family.

Then we can say that, she’s more likely to commit an altruistic suicide. In (4) she proclaimed that she’s was a martyr of Islam. In this context, she was fulfilling Jihad (meaning to strive or struggle in the way of God) Accordingly to Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (a Islamic scholar), he divides Jihad as a warfare in two parts

1. Against injustice and oppression.
2. Against the rejecters of truth in Islam after it has become evident to them.

Very evidently, in (6) and (7) of the newspaper articles, her decision to be a suicide bomber was moved by the Beit Hanun massacre. This energy and passion become a motivation for her willingness to sacrifice herself for social group to be freed from injustice and oppression according to her faith in Islam which in turn earned her “martyrdom”. In my conclusion, according to Durkheim, Suicide is not just an mere individualistic act and it’s internal world of feelings and mental states can be socially produced.

busy with sch work (tonnes and tonnes havent read up yet!!!) , exercise, thinking of getting a car license or buy a turntable? my yet-to-start business...housework... church..friends.. and too much thingy liao ar... who's loving me? haa!!