What is terrorism? In the vernacular today, due the media’s description, terrorism is always defined by people who want to rid the world of freedom, and all values, and harm anyone who gets in their way. This makes all terrorist sound as thought they are anarchists, wanting no government or laws. However if we ignore the connotation, and actually use the denotation of the word, terrorism is defined as “the calculated use of violence” in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature.¹ This means that terrorists just don’t want to take away freedom they want to achieve a common goal with a common ideology.

Now this brings out the next question, who is a terrorist? Throughout history the stronger nation in a conflict, always calls a group of rebels terrorists. However, if the rebels succeed and overthrow the oppressing government they are called freedom fighters. The United States itself is a great example. Throughout the American education system we learn that the founding fathers were great visionaries, and overthrew the oppressive British government, and became independent. But, the founding fathers are never regarded as terrorists, which according to denotation of the word, they were. The founding fathers tarred and feathered British soldiers and loyalists, they caused disruption with trade and hurt Great Britain economically, and they all thought it was just, because they were trying to become an independent nation. This is exactly the mindset of terrorists today, the so-called terrorists in the Middle East, and in the Islamic world, are committing these acts, not because, in the words of George W. Bush, “They don’t like the freedom that Americans have,” but because the want their own freedom, and they do not want to be oppressed by the US and their allies.

The main ally of the US that commits oppression in the middle east is Israel, and for the past century, the Israelis keep on oppressing the Palestinians, and the Palestinians try to fight back, and since the US is the worlds strongest power, it can determine which group is justified in their terrorism and which group is not. Since the Palestinians are fighting against and ally of the US, they are labeled as terrorists. However, if one is objective, and just looks at the statistics, since September 29, 2000, 4, 604 Palestinians have been killed while 1,033 Israelis have been killed.² As they say, the numbers don’t lie, in reality the Israelites are the true terrorists. They are the ones committing oppression, but the spin of the media is totally different.

Some may say, violence leads to more violence, as Gandhi stated “an eye for an eye, makes the whole world blind.” Some people might even use Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as exemplary individuals who changed the world with non-violent protests. They may say why the Palestinians don’t try that instead of killing in the streets. However Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi had two things that the Palestinians don’t have, they had partial support of the government, and more importantly they had the press and the ability to relay the horrific acts and oppressions that are done to them by the Israeli army. All the news that comes out of Israel is censored by the Israeli government so even though the oppression is being committed it is not being heard. To get our attention the Palestinians, have to do very extreme acts. but how would you feel if your house was bulldozed with you family inside?³

*DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT AGREE WITH ALL THE STATEMENTS ABOVE I WAS MERELY PRESENTING AN ARGUMENT WHEN DEBATING TERRORISM FOR A CLASS

1. http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=terrorism
2. http://www.ifamericansonlyknew.org/stats/deaths.html
3. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0206-05.htm

Tags: israel, jihad, palestine, terrorism