The very notion of "suicide terrorism" is strange and terrifying. It is far outside
the range of what one would consider as normal human behavior, representing a
conjunction of two very extreme events, far removed from civilized, socially sanctioned
activities: (1) the deliberate (rather than accidental) and indiscriminate killing of
noncombatants including women and children. (2) Taking one's own life in the process—
militating against the basic human instinct of personal survival. In response, our first
inclination might be to relegate "suicide terrorism" to the realm of psychopathology ; and
this is precisely how it was regarded by top experts little more than a decade ago. Ariel
Merari-- one of the world's supreme authorities on suicide terrorism, in a 1990 paper
approvingly cited Weiss’s opinion that; "personality disintegration (is) the single most
important factor in suicide". On that basis, Merari concluded that: "terrorism suicide, like
any other suicide, is basically an individual rather than a group phenomenon: it is done by
people who wish to die for personal reasons. The terrorist framework simply offers an
excuse (rather than the real drive) and the legitimation for carrying it out in a violent
way.” (Merari, 1990, p. 206).