THE SUICIDE BOMBER who carried out the September 9, 2004, attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was Heri Kurniawan, known as Golun, a 30-year-old from the village of Cigarung in west Java. As he travelled to Jakarta to carry out the attack that killed nine and injured 180, he left behind a wife who was nine months’ pregnant with their first child. Police found a letter Golun had written to his wife asking her and their child’s forgiveness and asking that the child be named Jundullah – “soldier of God”.

The suicide bomber who killed herself and 21 others in a restaurant in Haifa on October 4, 2003, was 29-year-old Hanadi Jaradat, a graduate of Jordan’s Jarash Law School and a trainee lawyer from Jenin. Amar Alfar, the 16-year-old who killed himself and three others in a market in Tel Aviv on November 1, 2004, probably knew his action would help trigger another Israeli incursion into the Gaza refugee camps, perpetuating the cycle of death, misery and desperation of his family, friends and his fellow Palestinians.