JAMES O. GOLDSBOROUGH / THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Overuse obscures the term 'terrorism'
December 3, 2001
Few words in the English language are more misused than the
word terrorist. One front page last week carried eight stories,
and every one included a reference to terrorists.
All adversaries are not terrorists. President Bush's description of
any nation that "harbors" terrorists as a terrorist nation is
meaningless. Many nations, including this one, must deal with
fanatical protesters. That does not make every nation terrorist.
It is a relative term. In Israel, Palestinians who kill Israeli
civilians are called terrorists. Israelis who kill Palestinian
civilians are called soldiers.
It is this relativism that led the Reuters news agency to tell
reporters to stop using the word, that one man's terrorist is
another's freedom fighter.
Two weeks ago Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Palestinians
to arrest and punish "perpetrators of terrorist acts" against Israel
and told Israel to "end its occupation" of Palestine.
Are acts committed against an occupier acts of terrorism or of
resistance?
Surely, you say, the word is not always relative. The heinous
acts of Osama bin Laden fit the political definition of terrorism,
which is the use of violent means against civilians to achieve
political ends.
Bin Laden is an easy case, both because his means were so
disproportionate and because he acted against civilians living
under a democratic government that is not an occupier.
What of the suicide bombings in Israel this weekend, which killed
at least 25 civilians?
In 1947-48, Jews in Palestine blew up British civilians (the King
David Hotel) and Palestinian civilians (Deir Yassin). For Jews,
both peoples were occupiers, and Jewish bombers were freedom
fighters, not terrorists.
For years, Israeli leaders, including Prime Ministers Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, refused to deal with PLO leader
Yasser Arafat on grounds he was a terrorist. The current prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, still refuses to deal with Arafat.
If Arafat was a terrorist, what of Begin, Shamir and Sharon?
In 1947-48, Begin headed Irgun, an underground group pledged
to drive Britain out of Palestine (which Britain did not "occupy"
but ruled under international mandate) and to fight Palestinians.
Irgun was responsible for the massacre of 250 Palestinian
civilians, including many women and children, at Deir Yassin, a
village near Jerusalem.
Shamir headed Lehi, an Irgun splinter group also known as the
"Stern Gang." In 1944, with the Allied war still raging against the
Nazis, Lehi murdered Lord Moyne, the British minister for the
Middle East.
Four years later, Lehi (a Hebrew acronym for "Freedom Fighters
of Israel") was held responsible for the murder of Count Folke
Bernadotte, U.N. mediator for Palestine. Bernadotte's sin was a
plan calling for the union of all the people of Palestine -- Jews,
Palestinians and Jordanians.
Is Sharon a terrorist?
In 1982, Defense Minister Sharon planned Israel's invasion of
Lebanon. During the occupation of Beirut, hundreds of
Palestinian refugees in two camps were murdered by Lebanese
Christian militiamen, allies of Israel. An Israeli investigation the
following year found Sharon "indirectly responsible" for the
massacre, and he was forced to resign from office.
Now Sharon heads a government that deliberately follows a
policy of "decapitation," that is, assassination of Palestinian
officials.
For years, Arafat was called a terrorist, not just by Israel and
America but by Egypt, which jailed him as a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood, terrorists in Nasser's eyes. Hafez al-Assad
of Syria, a nation on the State Department's "terrorist" list, tried
several times to kill Arafat.
When a "terrorist nation" kills a "terrorist" is it an act of
terrorism?
Arafat's Fatah was at the top of the U.S. and Israeli "terrorist"
lists for years. Then Fatah morphed into the PLO and then into
the Palestinian Authority, which Israel now counts on to fight
terrorists.
When do terrorists become statesmen? When terrorism
succeeds.
The word has been debased and degraded into meaninglessness,
and Bush did not help last week:
"If anybody harbors a terrorist, they're a terrorist. If they house
terrorists, they're terrorists. I mean, I can't make it any more
clearly (sic) to other nations around the world."
Well, yes, perhaps he could. There are real terrorists out there,
ones like bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
But the idea that we will turn our wrath on every nation with
which we have a dispute (e.g. North Korea, Iraq), or which
harbor groups potentially hostile to us (e.g. the Philippines,
Sudan, Syria, Egypt) is to turn a legitimate conflict into national
paranoia.
We will always face opposition from nations and groups that
oppose our values and our policies. That does not make them all
terrorists.
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda brought two new elements to
terrorism: They used more deadly means than ever before, and
they are irrational. Groups like Irgun, Lehi, Fatah and Hamas
used means proportionate to their ends and were coldly
rational.
There is no question about al-Qaeda's terrorism. Leave it at that |
