Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

650 • SUPERGRASS SYSTEMbook Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (NewYork: Random House, 2006). Bruce Hoffman also outlined the successesand vulnerabilities of the tactic of suicide terrorism in his article“The Logic of Suicide Terrorism” in the Atlantic Monthly (June 2003:40–47), in which he noted the spectacular rise of suicide attacks inIsrael following the outbreak of the September 2000 second intifadain which more than half of the 750 Israeli deaths since 2000 have beencaused by suicide bombings. Hoffman noted that effective counterterrorismintelligence by the Israeli Shin Bet (General Security Service)was able to reduce the incidence of suicide attacks by identification ofthe terrorist infrastructure, including intihari handlers as well as volunteers,so allowing effective preemption of suicide operations beforesuicide bombers can cross over into Israeli territory. In any case, since2004 there has been a marked decline in Palestinian suicide operationsagainst Israeli targets. Another research finding has been that Israelitargeting and killing of the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad ofPalestine either in retaliation for suicide operations or else preemptionof them was much less effective in reducing the recruitment of suicidevolunteers than the mere arrest and indefinite preventive detention ofleaders of Palestinian groups responsible for suicide operations. Seealso RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY.SUPERGRASS SYSTEM. The term “supergrass” evolved from Londonslang dating to the 1930s to refer to informers who were viewedas being “snakes in the grass.” In the 1970s English journalists thencoined the term “supergrass” to refer to high-profile mobsters whohad turned into informants against London’s organized crime syndicatesin order to receive reduced sentences. Beginning in 1981,British authorities in Northern Ireland resorted to the general tacticof turning a captured suspected terrorist, facing substantial charges,into a prosecution witness with immunity from prosecution for hisown crimes if he would denounce, and testify in court against, severalof his erstwhile colleagues. The arrest of Irish Republican Army(IRA) member Christopher Black in 1981 resulted in his turning intoa supergrass informant, leading to the arrests of 38 IRA suspects andthe conviction of 22 of them in August 1983. By the end of 1982another 25 supergrass informants led to the arrests of more than600 suspected members of the IRA, the Irish National LiberationArmy, and the Ulster Volunteer Force. Although both the Irish