Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa))--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2010. / Thesis Advisor(s): Hafez, Mohammed M. ; Second Reader: Springborg, Robert. "June 2010." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 14, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Terrorism, Weak States. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-95). Also available in print.

This study assumes that political terrorism results from conscious decision-making by groups opposing a governing system, policy or process. The kinds of terrorist activity employed depend upon such factors as the philosophy, goals, objectives, and needs of the terrorist group. This presents a comparative analysis of three types of terrorists in southwest Asia: Palestinians, Marxist-Leninists, and Muslims. The first section summarizes and compares the three groups' motivational causes, philosophies, histories and sources of inspiration. The second section compares their behavior from four perspectives: trends and patterns, level of violence, tactical preferences, and lethality. The third section identifies and categorizes socioeconomic, political and military variables associated with tactic selection and acts of terrorism.

The master thesis named The Transformation of Presentation of the Middle East Population in Post-9/11 American Films aims to closely analyze eight chosen mainstream American films with the help of the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The plot of the observed films has to be placed in the Middle East, picture terrorism or contain the Arabs or Muslims as characters. On the basis of a wide range of criteria and the final comparison, the thesis focuses on the comparison of the Hollywood movies which were created before and after the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001. The theoretical chapters are dedicated to the introduction of the social construction of reality, stereotyping and one-dimensional description of the Arabs in Hollywood films and mainly to the deep introduction of West and Islamic culture, not only from the historic but also cultural and valuable point of view. The applied methodology follows after. The detailed analysis of the chosen films is accompanied by photographs and excerpts directly from the films to help readers to understand the differences as much as possible. This part is followed by the final evaluation of the analysis on the basis of the comparison of the observed criteria. The hypothesis is confirmed at the end but there are also some other important...