The defense sought a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, based on posttraumatic stress disorder. The defense portrayed the traumas of the Palestinian people and of the defendant at the hands of the Israelis. The author of this article, who served as an expert witness for the prosecution, gave testimony designed to make sense to the jury about how a sane individual could believe that the commission of such violence and suffering against unarmed civilians was right. Rezaq had rationalized and justified his violence as a morally laudable service to the Palestinian people. This belief, however, was not a consequence of mental illness, but rather his socialization to violence in the refugee camps, where he was inspired to be a soldier in the revolution in order to reclaim his family lands. Such nationalist-separatist terrorism is particularly intractable because of the generational transmission of hatred and revenge toward Israel and its supporters as a valued mindset. Rezaq's beliefs and activism were common to thousands of his peers; but thousands of his countrymen who had suffered similar traumas did not choose to participate in killing innocent victims for the cause, choosing the path of political activism instead. Rezaq's decision to carry out the hijacking was not a consequence of posttraumatic stress syndrome. Rezaq is now serving a life sentence in Federal prison because the jury did not believe that narrow cultural conditioning toward hatred, revenge, and violence should be considered mental illness nor a justification for violating laws designed to sanction the victimization of innocent parties. 7 references