"While suicide bombers are often portrayed in the West as brainwashed automatons, Mr. Abu-Assad said his research in Palestine suggested that people acted mostly out of conviction. "The daily humiliation is so big that people just agree to it," he said. "The biggest motivation is the feeling of impotence. You are captured in your own city; you can't do anything about it; you are nothing.""By attacking the enemy society," he went on, suicide bombers "go from losing to winning. Religion is just a ceremony. That is the research I did. And I'm not the only one saying it. All the talk about brainwashing and virgins and the other life - it's just ceremony."