Press Archive

The Cult of the Suicide Bomber

Metro, Friday August 12, 2005
Last Night’s TV
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber

“Part two of The Cult of the Suicide Bomber was textbook perfect: shocking; informative; in-depth; and shocking again. With just a neatly pressed Wedgwood blue shirt for protection, former Middle East CIA agent Robert Baer simply and grippingly passported us into the Palestinian front line on the Gaza Strip.

…And great access video footage captured starstruck Palestinian children, smaller than their own machine guns, shaking hands with terrorists as if they were pop idols. It’s a culture foreign to our own, although the footage of exploding buses now creepily makes it less so…”

The Independent, Friday August 5, 2005
Last Night’s TV

“More evidence of the appeal violence holds for young men was provided in the first part of The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, in which Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, traced the origins of the phenomenon. Fascinatingly, its origins were traceable. The first suicide bomber was Hossain Fahmideh, a 13-year-old soldier in the Iranian army during the war with Iraq….In its concentration on individual loss, and perverse individual triumph, it was deeply unsettling.”

The Daily Telegraph, Friday August 5, 2005
Last Night on Television

“Robert Baer’s two-part documentary The Cult of the Suicide Bomber couldn’t be more timely, or more impressive in its access and detail. A former CIA agent for 20 years in the Middle East, Baer’s documentary had the ring of the insider from start to finish. …

Baer’s theory that the Iranians have been waging a war secretly against America for years may be going a step to far. But in other respects his arguments were convincing, thanks to hugely revealing interviews with relatives of dead bombers and their political and religious masters..”

The Times, Friday August 5, 2005
Last Night’s TV – Ian Johns

“..Baer explored an almost surreal world in which martyrdom was advertised on billboards and terrorists had their own promotional videos. And in another curious twist of fame, Baer is now being played by George Clooney in a Hollywood film…”

The Mail on Sunday, Sunday July 31, 2005
Must See TV ?????

“..Baer two-part film delves deep into the extreme fanaticism that makes such acts possible…His sober analysis is now required viewing …”

The Daily Mirror, Saturday July 30, 2005

“…this balanced history should help us to understand more about the world around us. Important stuff …”

The Daily Mirror, Saturday July 30, 2005

“…this balanced history should help us to understand more about the world around us. Important stuff …”

Terror's instruments

Cinema Village (1:30). Not rated: Violence, disturbing themes.

Staying true to its bleak title, this documentary tracks the history of terrorism by martyrdom, which has its roots in the organized culture of suicide warfare in the Middle East.

Narrator Robert Baer (best known as the inspiration for George Clooney's character in "Syriana") tries to understand why humans would give up their lives to take those of others, and he's gained remarkable access to those at the center of this ideology.

Given that fundamentalist faith and sober logic are irreconcilable enemies, though, Baer's analysis inevitably leads to a grim roadblock, at which he can do little more than tally the toll.

Elizabeth Weitzman

Wed., May 31, 2006, 2:05pm PT- Variety, New York

A Disinformation Co. presentation of a manyriversfilms production. Produced, directed by David Batty, Kevin Toolis. Written by Robert Baer. With: Robert Baer.

Robert Baer, the ex-CIA operative upon whom George Clooney's "Syriana" character was fashioned, is the narrator and central figure in "The Cult of the Suicide Bomber," a docu that aims to explain the tactic, as practiced in the Middle East. Benefiting from a remarkable array of interviewees, this thoughtful, incisive, controversial docu, which already aired on Australian TV, bowed June 2 at Gotham's Cinema Village.

One of the few agents based in Lebanon to escape the 1983 attack by a suicide bomber on the American Embassy, Baer took it as his mission to find out who was responsible and why. He traces the origins of such bombings to Iran, to a 13-year-old soldier who sacrificed himself to blow up a tank. Baer subsequently points to the Ayatollah Khomeini as the man who provided the idea for the cult. By re-imagining the Iran-Iraq War as a re-enactment of an ancient religious massacre that consecrated its Shiite victims as holy martyrs headed to paradise, Khomeini gave soldiers a reason to go into battle welcoming death.

Baer travels to Lebanon, where suicide bombing was practiced by members of Hezbollah on invading Israeli troops. The case is made that the huge disparity of firepower between the invading Israelis and the Lebanese army, and the large number of casualties among Lebanese civilians made suicide bombing one of the few effective logistical weapons available.

Baer argues that these were not terrorists, but ordinary soldiers, and wonders whether we would judge them differently if they had dropped bombs on the Israelis from the sky rather than blowing them up on the ground.

He observes that the event that launched suicide bombings inside Israel was perpetrated not by a Palestinian but by an Israeli settler who in 1994 opened fire in a Hebron mosque, killing 29 worshippers and injuring more than 100.

He singles out Palestinian Yahya Ayyash, mastermind of suicide bombings of Israeli buses, as the man responsible for changing this weapon of war into a weapon of terror. Present-day footage in the Occupied Territories of parades featuring children festooned with fake sticks of dynamite, and omnipresent posters of youthful martyrs testify to the widespread belief that suicide is the only heroic act of resistance left.

Baer pinpoints the 2005 London bombings, carried out by a homegrown group, as the birth of a new brand of terror dependent on no particular cadre, training or cause.

Baer fearlessly strides through bombing hot spots across the globe, venturing confidently into Iranian anti-American rallies, Hamas-controlled neighborhoods or Hezbollah headquarters, as archival footage of past devastation in each location counterpoints current tensions. As he sips coffee with a member of the Israeli Special Forces or sits down on a couch with a Muslim martyr's mother, he never evades a question or dodges a controversy.

Pic's theorizing is likely to inspire dissent from both left and right. Baer's views on the Occupied Territories are unlikely to please hard-line supporters of Israel, and his vision of Iran as a breeding ground for terrorists could be perceived as warmongering at a time when President Bush seems poised for attack.

Production values are those of a superior TV news special.

By Ronnie Scheib

New Yorker, June 6, 2006 By David Denby

“ Many of us, of course, have spent hours at the movies relishing violence and explosions as entertainment. In the documentary “The Cult of the Suicide Bomber,” we see explosions in which real people die, and the sequence comes as a kick in the gut. ”
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The Daily Telegraph, Friday September 23, 2005
Last Night on Television

“There was a strong element of farce too in Dispatches: the Big Heist (C4), Kevin Toolis’s compelling investigation into the robbery of £26million from the Northern Bank in Belfast last December…The farce came with the gang’s trouble laundering the biggest tash of cash swiped in the UK…As a fiction it would have made a terrific caper movie. As it was, the concern Toolis raised regarding the corruption of Irish democracy were anything but funny.”

The Sunday Times, Sunday August 18, 2005