When Is Violence “Terrorism”?
JVL Introduction
An interesting discussion by Alex Kane in Jewish Currents of the struggle to define “terrorism” as an international, legal concept, and how it should apply in struggles for self-determination.
The non-aligned movement (which currently embraces c. 120 members states) insists that the struggle for self-determination be covered by international humanitarian law which allows the use of force against soldiers (not civilians) in resisting occupation.
But many Western countries would like to define any such resistance as terrorism and, equally, any state reaction to it not as terrorism!
Israel itself has gone many steps further, extending the term to include “diplomatic terrorism” and “economic terrorism” (i.e. BDS) – that is, any form of resistance as variants of terrorism.
It then can use this an excuse for e.g. its recent outlawing of six Palestinian human-rights organisations as terrorist.
Or indeed to justify the reign of terror it has been exercising over the West Bank these past months in particular (and of course for much, much longer).
See aso Orly Noy’s essay A soldier is not a civilian.
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Tue 25 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
When Is Violence “Terrorism”?
The use of the term to condemn Palestinian armed struggle raises questions about who gets to define it.
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Every action taken by the Israeli government against the Palestinians, is terrorism
Surely any act that is deliberately designed to cause terror in civilians whether it be state actions as in war that is not to protect against attack but to destroy lives in the pursuit of power and resources or a gunman running amok with a semi-automatic. Of course state terrorism is used repeatedly, particularly by the US and backed by NATO members, and mostly in very asymmetric attacks often against civilians fighting to escape tyranny and subjugation, apartheid and torture by occupiers of their lands. By analogy, countries backing this repression and state terrorism are guilty of joint enterprise and should also be taken to the International Criminal Court. It makes my blood boil to pretend otherwise.
In today’s Daily Telegraph the action of Russian dissidents in blowing up a Russian railway line was described as “protest”.
On “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, Major Kira Nurys led her people, the Bajorans, in a successful resistance against the brutal Cardassian occupiers. The Cardassians referred to her as a terrorist. In fact, she concurred and she was unashamed.
She was one of the heroes of the show.
Terrorists are the one that terrorise the people. Hence, the State of Israel is a terrorist state; since it terrorises the Palestinian people.
Funnily enough in theory I have nothing against Zionism, nothing wrong with Jewish people seeking to have self-determination.
However, by the same token the Palestinian have the right to self-determination too, something that the State of Israel is denying them. Therefore, I see the actions of the State of Israel against the Palestinians as apartheid, part of an imperialistic colonial exercise.
There is a common contemporary view amongst people on the left that language develops continuously to reflect cultural and social change, and that therefore the concept of linguistic degeneration is meaningless, and is a notion espoused solely as a subjective reflex by those who cannot accustom themselves to changes in the use of language. However, while it is true that much opposition to changes in linguistic usage has a reactionary character, the belief that language usage cannot degenerate appears to me highly questionable.
The acid test for degeneration should not be whether the use of a word or expression changes its meaning over time, but whether in the process in deprives a speaker of a means of expressing an idea which previously had a certain clarity. This can occur either because the meaning of the expression has been eviscerated, or because an expression is used as a linguistic proxy to justify crimes against humanity. In our own time “antisemitism” is an example of the former while “illegal immigrant” is an example of the latter. The use of the word “terrorist” falls under both categories. A more mundane example of evisceration which tends to pass unnoticed is the use of the word “refute” which in current usage merely means “reject”; politicians regularly “refute” accusations against themselves, but do not feel called upon to produce any evidence for their so-called “refutation”.
The totalitarian regimes of the 20th century imposed such linguistic degeneneration over relatively short timescales with stunning efficiency, so that even their opponents found their mode of thought corrupted by the dominant discourse, The most remarkable account of this process is documented in the writings of the German Jewish linguist Victor Klemperer who recorded it in stunning detail in his diaries spanning 26 years surviving first in Nazi Germany and living later in communist East Germany.
Terrorism, is when a fourteen-year-old- Palestinian girl is kidnapped by feral Zionist settler thugs.
She may, or may not, have been molested, but the threat was always there.
That’s terrorism.
Thankfully, she has, now, been returned to her family, but that terror, she must have felt, will remain with her for a very long time – if not the rest of her life.
That’s terrorism.
Julian Assange is an ‘information terrorist’. According to Joe Biden.
“It’s a lot easier to shut down human rights organizations if you can brand them as terrorists first. It’s a lot easier to carry out extrajudicial assassinations if you brand the targets as terrorists,” said Munayyer. “The purpose of all of this is to create as much leeway as possible for the most violent and repressive type of action to eliminate any form of resistance.”