It is still terrorism when the Israeli State terrorises
JVL Introduction
Each time the UK mainstream media mentions , they seem obliged to remind us that Hamas is a group designated as terrorist by the UK and most western governments but not necessarily by those in the global south. And why is this label not applied to Israel, which has been and continues to violate international law? Here a strong argument is made for using the term “state terrorism” and why it matters, especially for the Palestinian people under massive bombardment in Gaza and also those subject to a brutal military occupation in the West Bank.
LL
This article was originally published by Security Context on Fri 22 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Why We Need To Talk About ‘State Terrorism’ By Israel In Gaza
Abstract: Israel’s war against Palestinians in Gaza is being criticised as constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity. But missing from these discussions is the way in which Israel’s actions fit the definition of terrorism and should be described, discussed, and responded to as ‘state terrorism’. The label is almost never applied to the behaviour of Western states nor its close allies. Such double standards are now only too visible when it comes to Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Defining Israel’s actions in Gaza as ‘state terrorism’ could potentially save Palestinian lives and influence public opinion.
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Israel was born as a terrorist State and has been so ever since.
The problem is that all the critics of Israel’s offensive have accepted it as being an attack on the Palestinians’ armed forces in the aftermath of 7 Oct (“defeating Hamas”) and criticised it as a callous over-reaction by Israel that has hurt civilian victims disproportionately. This has failed to recognise it as primarily an ethnic cleansing action aimed at enlarging Israel’s territory to bring Gaza into Israel and to weaken the Palestinian presence in the West Bank: to coin a slogan, “from the River to the Sea Israel will be free to do as it pleases”.
Anyone who has been paying attention to Noam Chomsky, would tell you that the greatest purveyor of terrorism has been and still is the United States of America. Not only has it bombed and terrorised tens of thousands, nay millions, in dozens of countries all over the world but it enables its terrorist allies such as Israel to do the same with impunity.
In the United States of America, terrorism is defined in Title 22
Chapter 38, of the U.S. Code as “premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents.” Get out clause no1 – terrorism can only be conducted by ‘subnational’ groups’. Oh so convenient.
The above arguments for Israel to be defined as a “terrorist state” are well-founded and speak for themselves.
However, we must recognise that Israel is the USA’s proxy in the Middle East and stands four-square behind Israel and its actions.
Without the USA’s backing, the State of Israel could not exist.
USA provides the weaponry and the ammunition for the “state terrorism” that we are witnessing every day.
USA has been the most-consistent state-sponsor of terrorism during my life.
Israel is only the latest heinous example.
I’m trying to decipher what the Pope & that arch bishop of Canterbury are saying .
As for so many MPs !!!
Evil reigns in all above .
Israel was founded on the basis of murder, terrorism, land theft and the support of the US, and its organisational base is still murder, terrorism, land theft and the support of the US. That is a very fragile basis on which to build a state which will last another generation in a region which is shifting its interests and dependence from the West to a world organised on the basis of multipolarity.
Hurrah! At last! Two academics agree with the blindingly obvious and what the demonstrators have been chanting for years: “2-4-6-8 Israel is a Terrorist state!”
The manipulation of language as a tool of war is a reality we did not need George Orwell to point out. The idea that the two main protagonists in waging an illegal war in Iraq – the US and the UK – should be the ones to designate who the “terrorists” are would be a bizarre joke were its consequences not so serious.
It is sad when British media report that an Israeli General warns that the “War on Hamas” (actually the ethnic cleansing / genocide of Palestinians of Gaza), may take months or even years – no questions asked! US Christian-Zionist sponsorship of this Crime Against Humanity should be questioned by anybody that believes in fundamental and universal human rights
Paul Wimpeney is right to point out that what we are dealing with here is “language as a tool of war”. The problem in stating the glaring truth that the Israeli state commits acts of terrorism, however, is that it deflects from the officially unacknowledged truth that a great many states are terroristic towards sections of their own populations as well as other nations’ populations.
What is peculiar to Israel is not that it is terroristic but that, as a settler state, it cannot be otherwise. The choice such states have is between terrorising a section of its own population – apartheid in South Africa – or using terrorism to reduce that population to an insignificant and impotent minority.
I have no specially detailed information about Hamas and its relationship to the Gaza population, in particular what degree of support it has for its military activities. Are these activities widely supported or not? In particular, to what extent was the October 7th attack supported by the broad population or can it be seen in part as the result of a degree of separation – ideological and psychological – between those enrolled in militias and poplar sentiment. Is the Dahiya doctrine predicated on a view that the “terrorists” have no strong roots among the population? Does Israel really believe that Hamas uses the population as human shields and that their rule in Gaza is itself based on terror or at least repression.
I can see why there is a reluctance to consider these questions, but they are important.
Incidentally that doctrine has a long history and is not specifically Israeli. I remember reading many years ago that the support from Labour members of the War Cabinet for the “bouncing bomb” project was based on their view that the misery caused by the flooding following the dam bursts would drive the civilian population – its immediate victims – to put pressure on the Nazi government to surrender.