Jessica Stern has been “going around the world asking terrorists why they do what they do.”

Mariam Soller wants to know why. Soller is originally from Chicago, but lives in Israel with her husband, Morris, who is at Iowa State on a sabbatical.

“I’ve had four suicide bombers within two blocks from my apartment,” Soller said. “I try to have it not affect me, but when I hear the sirens go by, if there’s more than a few … I run to the Internet to check. Over there, when you hear sirens, you get worried. When I hear sirens in Ames, it doesn’t bother me.”

Stern has been to Texas, Pakistan, Beruit, Gaza, Israel, Indonesia and Lebanon to find out why terrorists act the way they do. Her lecture, “Terror in the Name of God,” drew about 500 people Wednesday night to the Sun Room of the Memorial Union.

Stern said terrorist groups lose connection with what the rest of the world sees as reality.

“People inside the group … kind of slip over the moral edge,” she said.

She said terrorism often starts out because of a grievance.

“But over time, [the grievance] becomes a marketing strategy,” she said.

For example, al-Qaida began with a desire to defeat the Soviet Union in the Middle East, she said. After defeating the Soviets, al-Qaida switched its mission and wanted to defend Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. The group was rebuffed, and so it switched its mission again, she said.

“[Al-Qaida is] basically the March of Dimes of terrorist organizations,” Stern said. “They’ll find new missions.”

She warned the audience to be very skeptical of a terrorist group that claims to have always had the same mission.

Stern said emotional rewards for members of terrorist groups play another major factor. An example of this, she said, is that Islamic terrorist groups believe the Islamic world has been humiliated by the Western world — and believe the only way to overcome that humiliation is to participate in the jihad.

“It means we have to think about how to fight terrorism, how to treat this humiliation,” Stern said. “When we respond with violence, and I sometimes think we have to … we have to weigh short-term benefits and long-term costs.”

These long-term costs, she said, are vast and usually result in additional humiliation which further fuels terrorist groups. Humiliation is a “mobilizing cry,” she said. In this way, covert action is often more effective than overt action when dealing with terrorism, she said.

Soller, who has dual citizenship in Israel and the United States, will have to continue to live with terrorism in her neighborhood. She said tourists and other visitors to Israel are often afraid of suicide bombers and won’t ride buses.

“You can’t let it interfere with your life,” she said. “For regular people, you have to keep getting on buses, keep living your life.”