Suicide bombers are often compared to smart bombs. From the point of view of their dispatchers, they are highly effective, inexpensive forms of weaponry, and there is no need to invest in their technological development. Suicide bombers are in fact smarter than smart bombs because they can choose their own target―and they can react to circumstances on the ground, changing their target, or their timing, in an instant, to ensure the maximum damage, destruction, and death. Of course, unlike smart bombs, suicide bombers think and feel, they have histories, stories, beliefs, desires―in short, they have an inner world. Exploring the inner world of suicide bombers has been the focus of Anat Berko's research for years. She has worked to understand the thought processes of a people who can choose to place explosives on their bodies and kill themselves, taking as many other people with them as they can.Do male bombers really believe that death will transport them to a paradise where they will be greeted by virgins? Are they victims of unbearable pressure to commit this act of terror? What are female bombers promised in the hereafter? Is there something that links all suicide bombers? Berko also explores the world of those who drop the smart bomb―the dispatchers: who are these people who persuade others to go calmly to their horrific deaths?

"For more than four decades, socially disadvantaged Israeli Mizrahim--descendants of Middle Eastern Jews--have continuously supported right-wing political parties. Sociologists, NGOs, and left-wing politicians tend to view Mizrahim as acting against their own interests, but Nissim Mizrachi locates the problem within the limitations of the liberal grammar with which their behavior is read. In Beyond Suspicion, Mizrachi turns the direction of inquiry upon itself, contrasting liberal grammar--which values autonomy, equality, and universal reason and morality--with the grammar of Mizrahi rootedness, in which the self is experienced through a web of relational commitments, temporal ties, and codes of collective identity. Recognizing rootedness as a fundamental need for belonging is necessary to understand both scholarly and political rifts in Israel and throughout the world"--

This first large-scale empirical work on the adjustment problems of immigrants in Israel is now updated with a new introduction by the author and a preface by Alex Weingrod. The extraordinary phenomenon of worldwide immigration to Israel has made this searching study of people in transit possible. "Immigrants on the Threshold" reports on the attitudes and behaviors of almost 2,000 people from twenty countries during their first year in Israel during the early years of mass migration. It is of particular interest as the phenomenon of integration becomes an issue for concern in many other parts of the world. "Immigrants on the Threshold" by Judith Shuval presents a theoretical framework closely intermeshed with rich empirical findings. No other work in this field approaches this study in either depth of theoretical analysis or in design and execution of data collection performed by conducting in-depth interviews and then using statistical analysis to quantify results in exacting and objective detail. It attempts to answer a number of critical questions: What factors in the immigrants' past and present condition their responses to the strain of transit? What is the role of commitment to the goal of the new society into which they must incorporate? What is the role of different social and economic backgrounds in determining patterns of acculturation? What factors affect the aspirations and mobility patterns of immigrants? The answers to these questions - the hypotheses formulated and the conclusions reached in "Immigrants on the Threshold" - contribute substantially to the fields of both sociology and social psychology. These answers, and the methods used to reach them, should be of interest to anyone in these fields and the field of applied social research, as well as those interested in Israel and questions of immigrant integration.