Civilization is a welding of humane values with technological
development for the development of society. Terrorism represents the
antithesis of civilization, it is the worst that humanity can come up
with. No matter how long the list of grievances there is no cause that
justifies the killing of innocent civilians; not in the WTC and not in
Colombia, Palestine, South Asia, or anywhere else. Terror and violence
never paves the way to justice but only leads to more violence and
terror. Palestinain Poet Mahmoud Darwish said it succinctly "But then,
nothing, nothing, justifies Terrorism"
Any rational examination of the problem of terrorism cannot rely on
the notions of a "clash" of cultures or civilizations. While strongly
condemning and working against terror, we must address the political,
economic and other forces that lead to terrorism rationally. The
insistence of some that terrorism is somehow a phenomenon of certain
cultures or religions is not only factually wrong but simply cannot lead
to any rational diagnosis and treatment of this blemish on human
heritage. At best it is a corrupt and cowardly intellectual exercise to
say that certain people and cultures are "not like us" and at worst it
is pure racism.
The attack on the World Trade Center 9/11/01 is a horrific crime
against humanity were thousands perished in one day but we ought to put
in context lest we despair. The most civilians killed in North America
were the millions of native Americans by the European invaders (native
Americans used to be called savages and barbarians before the word
terrorist came into widespread use). This carnage on the North American
continent is followed by the many thousands killed in the US civil war.
Americans have otherwise been spared massive casualties of military and
civilian deaths. Aside from the attack on Pearl Harbor and the recent
attacks in the US, no American town or city was bombed since the civil
war.
By contrast, we should remember that perhaps as many as 27 million
Russians perished in WWII. Iraq lost over 200,000 people during the war
and over 1 million civilians in the US led Gulf War and the sanctions
that followed. Rwanda had hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred
just a few years ago while the world kept silence. Millions of
Phillipinos, Koreans and Vietnamese were massacred either directly or
indirectly by proxies of the west. Congress still refuses to acknowledge
the Armenian genocide of 1917 and so on. The US actually bombed 23
countries since the end of WWII. So while not minimizing terror on
America, I think we need to keep it in perspective of what the rest of
the world has been going through over the past 60 some years.
Terrorism against America is itself a relatively new phenomenon.
Interestingly, neither America nor the Middle East were places of most
individual terrorist acts. According to the right-wing leaning Heritage
Foundation in DC: Asia suffered the most deaths as a result of terrorist
attacks; a total of 9,713 perished there from 1995 to 2000. Africa
follows with 5,762 deaths for the 6-year period. The Middle East comes
next with 2,190, and Western Europe with1,212. North America had the
least number of dead, with only seven during that period. Asia has the
highest number of deaths in a single year for any region, with 5,639
dead in 1995.
Thus it is amazing that the media catoring to certain interests and
not too concerned for balance or accountability, constantly ties issues
of terrorism to the Middle East. But be as it may, let us look at
terrorism in with particular emphasis on the Middle East.
To understand the Middle East you have to know a bit about what the
West did and did not do in this area.
The Balfour Declaration to Baron Rothchild, on the 2nd of November,
1917 (issued without consulting the inhabitants of the area, over 94% of
them were not Jewish and many Jews in the area who vociforously opposed
the Zionist program stated thus: "His Majesty's Government view with
favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement
of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status
enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The same Lord Balfour wrote in private memorandum to Lord Curzon, 11
August 1919: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form
of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country." Did
anything change since 1919 in terms of the attitude of this western
leading government or its successor (the US)?
I like everyone else was terribly shocked at the horrendous attack on
America Sept 11. But I was not surprised. Two days earlier, eight people
were killed in southern Iraq when British and American planes bombed
civilian areas. To my knowledge, not a word appeared in the mainstream
media. An estimated 200,000 Iraqis died during and in the immediate
aftermath of the the Gulf War. At least a million civilians, a majority
of them children, have since died in Iraq as a result of a medieval
embargo imposed by the United States and Britain. In May 1996, Lesley
Stahl of 60 MINUTES asked Madeline Albright: "We have heard that a half
million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean,
that's more children than died in Hiroshima and and you know, is the
price worth it?" U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright looked
straight at the camera and said: "I think this is a very hard choice,
but the price we think the price is worth it."
But also people forget that the US was for many years a supporter of
Saddam Hussain because he was fighting our war against the "bad"
Iranians. At the time we were not concerned with his violations of
International law or use of chemical weapons.
For many years now, the US also had a policy of helping Kurds in
North Iraq against Saddam while helping Turkey with weapons, armamanets
and support to crush the same Kurdish people fighting for independence
in East and South Turkey. The hypocracy and lack of principle are not
lost on the Kurds, the Turks, or the Iraqis.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Mujahedeen, and their progeny the
Taliban, were largely the creation of the CIA ostensibly to get rid of
Soviet backed governments in Afghanistan. Through channels that included
teh CIA and middle men like Adnan Khashogi (Arms dealer), the US
funneled billions of dollars to get rid of teh soviet supported
government of Afghanistan. The terrorist training camps where Osama bin
Laden, now "America's most wanted man", allegedly planned his attacks,
were built with American money and backing. After we "won" the war, we
left Afghanistan, cared little for the second largest refugee problem in
the world (the first being also one that we care little about:
Palestine) and moved to our next battlegrounds (Somalia, the Balkans,
Panama etc).
In Vietnam, the dispossession, maiming and poisoning of an entire
nation was not only dramatic and dreadful but also educational to the
third world. This mass of humanity learned taht acts like Operation
Phoenix where the CIA arranged the killing of around 50,000 people can
be resisted and overcome by people with limited resources.
In Palestine, the enduring illegal Israeli occupation and violence
against the natives would have collapsed long ago were it not for US
backing. We give Israel, which represents about 0.1% of the world
population. 33% of our foreign aid (100 billion dollars in direct aid
transfered over the pat 30 years and much more indirectly).
These facts are absent from or minimized by Western media. But they
do not go unnoticed by millions in those countries affected. Richard
Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, put it this
way: "Western foreign policy is presented almost exclusively through a
self-righteous, one-way legal/moral screen (with) positive images of
Western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a
campaign of unrestricted political violence."
People in the third world as well as progressive forces in the west
are understandably dismayed at the concentration of wealth built on
power. Perhaps this explains the incredible number of demonstrators
protesting the IMF and World Bank meetings.
Perhaps in the name of this power and the New World order, the US
government does a lot of things with impunity: blockades on several
countries (Cuba, Iraq etc), an incredible arms trade dominated by the
US, refusal to abide by any environmental limits (US with 6% of the
world's population generates 35% of its pollution), a domineering role
in the UN (vetoing many resolutions that would have been adopted
otherwise), and great concentration and isparity of wealth.
American forces currently operate from bases in over 50 countries and
we are directly engaged in supporting dictators and violators of human
rights in most of these countries.
Can we assume that people will be still or stupid when they see
justice and International law compromised, their independence
obliterated, their resources and land taken away to benefit the rich and
wealthy?
A little examination of history reveals that the biggest dangers to
empires is when they spread themselves too thin, take on more than they
can handle, and get simply too self centered and arrogant to see the
world around them changing. The Roman, Ottoman, Spanish, Soviet, and
British empires provide many lessons. Shall we learn these lessons in
time?
Palestine and Israel and terrorism
Generally, any occupying or colonial power would label resistance to
its occupation as terrorism (lumping some acts even when not terrorism
but legitimate resistance). Examples include the French resistance to
German occupation, the Algerian resistance to French occupation, the
Palestinain resistance to British occupation, the South African black
resistance to apartheid, the Afghan resistance to Russian occupation,
and ofcourse the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. One must
distinguish legitimate resistance to oppression and colonization, as
approved in the United Nations Charter, from terrorism. In the context
of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination this distinction has
been intentionally obfuscated by the Zionists and their friends in the
Western Media. Terror indeed occasionally rears its ugly head in acts of
native populations against colonial power. Examples are too numerous to
cite but include ANC "necklacing" of collaborators, native American
attacks on civilians (including "scalping" which was first introduced by
the Conquistadores), bombing of British and Arab civilian areas by
Jewish groups in Palestine in the 1930s, Palestinian airplane hijacking
and suicide bombings in civilian areas.
The Declaration on Principles of International Law (1970) emphasised
that all states are under a duty to refrain from any forcible action
which deprives people of their right to self-determination. The
Declaration also notes that "in their actions against, and resistance
to, such forcible action" such peoples could receive support in
accordance with the purpose and principles of the UN Charter. Various UN
resolutions have reaffirmed the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples
for liberation from colonial domination and alien subjection, "by all
available means including armed struggle" (see e.g. UNGA 3070, 3103,
3246, 3328, 3481, 31/91, 32/42 and 32/154). In article 1(4) of Protocol
I (additional to the Geneva Conventions) considers self-determination
struggles as international armed conflicts situations. The principle of
self-determination itself provides that where forcible action has been
taken to suppress the right, force may be used in order to counter this
and achieve self-determination.
Palestinians did resort to terrorism as did the native Americans, the
IRA, the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and a many
other movements. Palestinian terrorism was minuscule though compared to
Israel's use of terror which was both qualitatively and quantitatively
far superior than that of the Palestinians. The number of people killed
by terrorist actions by Israel both before its creation and after has
far exceeded (usually by more than an order of magnitude) the number
killed by Palestinian groups (Human Rights Organizations reports).
Terror, as a useful and purposeful policy was first adopted in the
modern Middle East by Zionists. The first airplane hijacking was
committed by Israel. On 12 December 1954 a civilian Syrian airliner was
hijacked by Israel shortly after take-off. The first car-bomb was an
invention of Zionists, as was the assassination of United Nations
personnel. A Zionist truck-bomb blew up the King David hotel in
Jerusalem killing 88 in 1946. Zionist terror in the 1930s and 1940s has
been neglected in the discussion about terrorism in the Middle East.
Both former prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, as
well as current Likud-leader Ariel Sharon, were terrorist commanders
responsible for numerous atrocities, including acts against Jews. The
archives of Haganah contain the names of forty Jews who were killed by
Begin's and Shamir's groups (Nahum Barnea and Danny Rubenstein, Davar,
19 March 1982). The Zionist record of terror is long and bloody before
the creation of Israel. In the single month of July 1938, the Irgun
killed 76 Palestinians in terrorist attacks (Simha Flapan, Zionism and
the Palestinians, St. Martin's Press, 1977, ch. 2).
Before the Arab countries engaged in the Palestine/Israel conflict,
Zionsit forces have already committed several of their massacres
including the infamous one at Deir Yassin in April 9, 1948. More than
half of the 531 Palestinian villages and towns were depopulated by
Israeli military actions before Israel was established in May 15, 1948
and thus before the beginning of the first major Arab Israeli war
(according to Israeli historians).
Between December 1947 and February 1949, 161 Palestinians were killed
and 320 injured by Irgun, Stern and Haganah terrorist attacks on
market-places and cafes. Bus atttacks in the same period killed fifteen
Palestinians. On 30 December 1947 the Palmach, the strike forces of
Haganah, attacked and massacred 60 Palestinian villagers of Bald as-Shaikh.
But Israel also continued to terrorize the natives into leaving even
after the hostilities ended and cease-fires were signed. This post war
ethnic cleansing occured in 64 of the 531 Palestinian localities
depopulated according to Israeli historians.
More cross border massacres and terror ensued afterwards. 700 Regular
Israeli troops (Force 101) attack the border village of Qibya on
10/14/53. The troops led by a young commander, Ariel Sharon, used
mortars, machine guns, rifles and explosives. 42 houses are blown up as
well as the local schools and the mosque. Every man, woman and child
found were murdered in cold blood (a total of 75 according to
independent estimates). Ben-Gurion initially claims this was carried out
by "Jewish terrorists" and not by the IDF but this was later retracted.
However, Qibya was only a minor massacre compared to those committed in
Lebanon by Israel or its paid cronies (Sabra and Shatila, Qana etc.).
Israeli actions were responsible in total for the killing of perhaps as
many as 30-50,000 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Historians also
now acknowledge that Israeli forces also executed hundreds of prisoners
of war in the Sinai in 1967.
Some of the violence is directly attributed to basic racism. Israeli
Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, commenting on the Israeli killing of Palestinian
demonstrators justified it by clarifying that killing isn't murder if
the victim is Gentile stating "Jewish blood and a goy's [gentile's]
blood are not the same" (Jerusalem Post, June 19,1989).
As can be easily documented by any student of history, the recent
violence against the Palestinian population is not new. This has gone on
now for over 65 years. Before Israel was established, Zionism was born
in blood and terrorism against the native population. Zionists did not
even spare Jews from their terror tactics. Hagannah archives show dozens
of Jews killed and Zionists planted bombs in the 1950s to scare Jewish
Iraqis to leave for the promised land (see Gileadi's excellent book on
the topic).
Israel Eldad, has written, "Had it not been for Deir Yassin, half a
million Arabs would be living in the State of Israel. The State of
Israel would not have existed. We must not disregard this, with full
awareness of the responsibility involved. All wars are cruel. There is
no way out of that. This country will be Eretz Israel with an absolute
Jewish majority and a small Arab minority, or Eretz Ishmaelif we do not
expel the Arabs one way or another." "One way or another" is a chilling
phrase for many Jewish Israelis who believe that "The solution of the
transports, the trucks, is not the end of the story. There is a further
stage, which the proponents of racist Zionism do not usually refer to
explicitly, since the conditions for it are not yet ripe. But the
principles are there, clear and inevitable. This is the stage of
genocide, the destruction of the Palestinian people." (Ibid., pp. 262 ?
263, citing Davis and Mezvinsky, eds. Documents from Israel, p. 187, and
Yoram Peri, Davar, 3 August 1984, in Israeli Press Briefs, no. 28).
With the Likud assumption of power in 1977 and the subsequent rise of
extreme right-wing forces in Israel, the most far-reaching proposals
entered mainstream Zionist thinking and official circles. Such
proposals, including Arab population removal, were outlined in an
article by Oded Yinon entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s",
which appeared in the WZO's periodical Kivunim in February 1982. The
article called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and
fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings.
According to Yinon, the policy of Israel must be "to bring about the
dissolution of Jordan; the termination of the problem of the [occupied]
territories densely populated with Arabs west of the [River] Jordan; and
emigration from the territories, and economic-demographic freeze in
them." He added, "we have to be active in order to encourage this change
speedily, in the nearest time."
Yinon believed, like many advocates of transfer in Israel, that
"Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass
expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and
shortly after the [1967] war.... Such a line would have saved us the
bitter and dangerous conflict ever since which we could have already
then terminated by giving Jordan to the Palestinians."
Israel is adept at learning new and improved methods in its campaign
to colonize the land of Palestine. Benjamin Netanyhu, then Israeli
Deputy Foreign Minister told students at Barllan University: "Israel
should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China,
when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass
explosions among the Arabs of the territories." From the Israeli Journal
Hotam (November 24,1989). Twelve years later, Israeli Defense Minister
Ben Eliezer told the Yediot Aharonot Newspaper 13 Sept. 2001 two days
after the terrorist attack on the US: "It is a fact that we have killed
14 Palestinians in Jenin, Kabatyeh and Tammun, with the world remaining
absolutely silent. It's a disaster for Arafat,"
Leadership thought in Israel concentrated on two models to deal with
Palestinians: direct terror and power with thinning those in the areas
or an apartheid like system to confine and control them. Referring to
members of underground Jewish organizations in occupied areas in 1984,
General Yehoshafat Harkabi observed that "they are rational people whose
chief motivation stems from their awareness that annexation of the West
Bank together with its Arab population would be disastrous and
tantamount to national suicide ? unless that population were thinned out
and made to flee by means of terrorism". He added that terrorism was
"the logical, rational conclusion of the policy that aims at annexation.
Such terrorism is neither a punishment nor a deterrent; it is a
political instrument" (David McDowall, The Uprising and Beyond, p. 262,
citing Ha,aretz, 11 May 1984).
The US's overall role has been even more horrendous. We must remember
that the US took over from the British the role of policeman of the
Middle East. Henry Kissinger codified US foreign policy in this area in
the 1970's. They include our "unique" relationship with Israel, ensuring
stability (status quo with loyal Arab ductators), keeping the flow of
cheep oil in our direction and arms in the other direction, massive
foreign aid centered on advancing these goals (currently several
$billion per year to Israel alone), commitment to keeping Israeli
military superiority to any combined regional force, and commitment to
not do anything against Israeli interests. Clinton, Gore, and Bush
repeatedly emphasized this latter point by pledging never to pressure
Israel (not even when US interests are at stake). Even as the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) escalated attacks on civilians recently, Congress
approved additional military aid and passed a resolution supporting
Israel.
Admiral Thomas Moorer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (See Washington
Report 12/1999, p.124 quoting from Andrew Hurley's book, "One Nation
Under Israel" wrote in this regard: "I've never seen a president --I
don't care who he is-- stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles
your mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what's
going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing
anything down. If the American people understood what grip those people
have on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don't
have any idea what goes on."
The Oslo "peace process "represented a new "tool to reach traditional
[Israeli] objectives" (quote from Israeli Prime Minister Rabin). Those
objectives include the desire to resolve the impasse in the territories
(demographic) by means of an apartheid system since Israel is not
capable of fulfilling the right wing aspirations without significant
cost. Interestingly, things have gotten worse for the Palestinians since
Oslo (but obviously better for the Israeli military policy). Israel
having policed the occupied people for so long was weary and tired and
wanted the Oslo accords as a way to legitimize the occupation while
removing the burden of being in direct policing of Palestinians. The
idea was to have jailers who are Palestinians. If you read the Oslo
accords, that is what most of the lines deal about. Under the guise of
"security", it was demanded that free speech be inhibited, that any
opposition to this sham peace be silenced etc. It became a mantra for
Israeli politicians when confronted with issues of human rights or
international law (settlements, refugees etc) to simply say that "we are
discussing these things at the table." This provided them with the cover
to accelerate land confiscations, settlement expansions and building
bypass roads.
In the meantime Jewish settlers/colonizers were given a free hand to
loot, kill, and terrorize the native Palestinians. Ha'aretz Editorial on
10/28/1998 reported that "while the Palestinian Authority is asked to
bring all its force to bear against the Hamas infrastructure, it appears
that Israel is indifferent to the fanatic, violent infrastructure in the
areas under its control."
In our search for answers to the violence in this world we should
always remember the history lest we repeat the same mistakes and breed
more violence. To truly "drain the swamp" that breeds terror (as Powell
put it), we must tackle the forces and powers filling the swamp:
economic deprivation and injustice. Only by being aware and working for
justice and non-violence can we hope to truly "fight terrorism."
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is
based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty,
but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to
emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see
only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember
those times and places - and there are so many - where people have
behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the
possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different
direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to
wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession
of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in
defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history
of our times, p. 208)
