I was reading an International Herald Tribune article today when a particular passage caught my attention. It described U.S.-led peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and according to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, “neither Israelis nor Palestinians had fully lived up to their obligations. Israel is supposed to end all settlement building and remove illegal settlement outposts, while the Palestinians are supposed to dismantle terrorist infrastructures.”
…Terrorist infrastructures? By this, did she mean Hamas? And if so, how does one truly define a terrorist organization? A group that defends its people? A group that stands up against its oppressors and says enough? Or does it come down to the number of innocent casualties incurred by the group’s actions? Or most importantly, how those innocent casualties come about, because we all know that a suicide bombing that kills ten is deemed more atrocious than a precise missile that kills 100?**
Dictionary.com defines terrorism as “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.” But according to this definition, wouldn’t Rice herself be a member of a terrorist organization, the U.S. government? Couldn’t Israeli refusal to halt all settlement activity be perceived as a terrorist act, seeing as how such settlements not only undermine international law, but intimidate Palestinian civilians in the West Bank?
It’s funny (well, not actually ha-ha funny, more disturbing than anything else) how we deem groups terrorist organizations without so much as understanding their motives or reasoning. That is not to say that attacks on civilians are ever warranted or shouldn’t be taken seriously, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see more civilians casualties at the hands of American or Israeli armies than by Palestinian suicide-bombers or Hamas’ acts of “terrorism.”
It’s also interesting to note that Nelson Mandela, now viewed as a symbol of peace, courage and determination worldwide, was considered a terrorist (as a member of the African National Congress that fought against South African apartheid). In fact, as of July 2008, Mandela was still on the U.S.’s terrorism watch list.
**I don’t believe that we can, or should, put a price on human suffering in any instance. In this way, the last question was merely to prove the point that actions by non-governmental groups are often deemed evil, whereas the same actions propagated by governments are instead viewed as necessary.
