The term ”terrorism” was hardly born in 1947, since the Nazis called the Maquis in occupied France ”terrorists” and their actions ”terrorism” before that, Denis.

Calling someone a terrorist or labeling a particular act ”terrorism” does not make it a fact. There are certain criteria that experts in international law use to define what a terrorist is and what terrorism is.

A terrorist does not represent or carry out the policies of a legitimate, recognized government of any soverign nation.

A terrorist deliberately targets civilian populations and avoids confrontations with his enemy’s military, with the intent of sowing panic and creating civilian pressure on his enemy’s leaders.

A terrorist always defends his own crimes as ”resistance”, while claiming that all his enemy’s retaliatory actions are ”war crimes”.

A terrorist’s aim is not the restoration of a legitimate government or the building of a country, but only the destruction of some other government or nation, although sometimes the claim will be made that he is trying to restore or establish his country.

With these criteria, we can see that the Maquis of France in WW II were not ”terrorists”, although the occupying Nazi regime tried to label them as such, nor were their actions ”terrorism”, although they may have inspired fear among the German soldiers occupying France.

Using the same criteria, one can reasonably make the statement that the Palestinian ”resistance” organizations are terrorists by answering the following questions:

Do they represent the legitimate government of a sovereign nation? For this question, you first have to answer whether ”Palestine” is a sovereign nation with a legitimate government. Since even the Palestinians can’t decide who the ”legitimate government” of Palestine is, the answer would have to be no.

Do they attack civilian populations? Yes.

Do they avoid confrontation with their enemy’s military? Yes.

Do they commit atrocities and claim they are acts of ”resistance”? Yes.

Do they claim that every act of their enemy is a ”war crime”? Yes.

I realize that many readers here will disagree with me, but that’s their right, just as it’s mine to disagree with them.
= = =
Was the attack on Mumbai a terrorist act? Using the criteria above, we can infer that it was... it had all the hallmarks mentioned in the criteria.

It’s a sad but unassailable fact that for the past few decades, 90% or more of the acts that can be defined as terrorism have been committed by Islamics. While I do not support the concept that the majority of Islamics are terrorists, I do contend that the majority of terrorists in the world today are Islamics.

Yes, the word ”terrorist” is an emotionally loaded word... but so was the word ”pirate” at one time in history. In my opinion, today’s terrorists are no better than yesterday’s pirates, with the sole exception that they ”justify” their actions by claiming nationalist causes as the basis for their acts rather than personal greed.

Me Enki:

Zahir Muhsein (also spelled Zuheir Mohsen and Zuhayr Mohsein) was a member of the PLO Executive Committee from 1971 to 1979, based in Syria.

As a member of the PLO Executive Committee, he should have known what the PLO’s intentions of promoting Palestinian Nationalism were better than anyone else.

”Israel definitely engaged in ”terrorist” activities against Great Britain to gain independence. I think that’s what Denis was talking about.”

Denis has to be taken with a grain or two of salt.

Despite what Denis thinks, even though the Irgun and Stern Gang were outlawed even by the Jewish ”shadow government”, they fall short on several of the criteria listed above.

Neither of them attacked exclusively civilian targets for the purpose of killing and wounding civilians.

They did not avoid conflict with the enemy (British) military, in fact, a majority of their actions were carried out against British military targets.

Once statehood was achieved, the leaders of both these groups (Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) made the transition from ”resistance fighter/terrorist” to statesman, and were even elected Prime Minister of Israel (without my vote, however).

@ Me Enki

“1) Hamas is recognized as the legitimate government of Gaza. They did win a fair, fully monitored free election.”

Is this your only criteria? I don’t deny that they won a fair, free, democratic election, but their behavior subsequent to that election has been anything but fair, free and democratic. Legitimacy and democracy are not based on a single event, but are ongoing issues. Remember that Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mugabe and Milosevich were also “legitimately and democratically elected”, but their subsequent behavior overshadowed their rise to power.

“2)Read T. E. Lawrence’s (Lawrence of Arabia), Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The whole concept of irregular warfare is to attack where the enemy is weakest. Preferably where he is not even present. When the British government does it, its cool cause it’s backed by a legitimate government. That’s simply a double standard.”

Lawrence did not support suicide bombings of civilian targets or indiscriminate artillery firing on civilian towns.

“3)Hamas does not exclusively attack civilian targets. Ten Israeli soldiers died in the recent Gaza fighting. They didn’t just stub their toes. If you did a little more research you would learn that the Israeli Defense Forces come under constant attack by anti-Israeli’s.”

Four of those 10 died by “friendly fire”, so for over 600 of their own casualties, Hamas succeeded in killing 6 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians. You must believe Hamas is very inefficient. If that’s the case, why do they constantly provoke Israel?

If you consider firing a mortar or rocket towards a guard tower or border crossing, then running like a rabbit an “attack”, you show more respect towards Hamas than I do.

“4)All sides claim to be ”legitamate resisters” and paint the other side as ”war criminals”. This is nothing unique to ”terrorists” and is really just faulty logic to even mention.”

Your logic here is unclear, but no one has claimed that Israel is a “resister”. Israel is a sovereign country, with an impressive list of achievements in the fields of science, medicine, education, agriculture, industry and more, that have benefitted humanity. I don’t think that any country, whatever its size, with a similar list of achievements had to justify its existence to anyone. Its record of achievements speaks for itself—except to those who wish to hate blindly.

As a sovereign country, it has a DUTY (not a “right”) to protect its citizens from attacks by foreign entities – read the UN Charter.

“5)”Do they attack civilian populations? Yes.” Who are you talking about Hamas, who killed a literally a handful of Israeli settlers, or the IDF who killed over 1000 civilians?”

The jury is still out on the exact number of casualties, especially the number of “militants” relative to civilians, since Hamas “fighters” were mostly not in uniform. I believe that the actual number of civilian casualties who were not involved in the fighting at all will be far lower than the initial Palestinian claims, just as they were after the “Jenin Massacre” of 2002, when initial claims were 5,000 civilian dead came up in the end to 58, 46 of whom were actual fighters.

How do you define a “fighter” in civilian clothes, killed while moving from one position to another unarmed, intending to collect a new firearm at his new location so he can continue fighting; is he considered a “combatant” or a “non-combatant”? The Gaza operation has brought new factors, previously unknown, into the arena, and they will have to be resolved. Making blanket declarations according to criteria no longer valid isn’t an option.

While the number of Israelis killed in recent years is low, this does nothing to mitigate the intent of Hamas, whose declared objective is to destroy the state of Israel and replace it with an Islamic Shari’a state. Have you ever heard of the concept “criminal intent”? Ask a lawyer about it.

“6)”Do they commit atrocities and claim they are acts of ”resistance”? Yes.” Look at the IDF again.”

War in itself is an atrocity. Again, the IDF has never claimed to be “resisting” anything but the declared aims of Hamas and the PLO, namely, the destruction of the state of Israel. Has the IDF committed actions indictable as war crimes? Maybe it has, but that’s for neutral, competent authorities to judge. Claiming that an action is a war crime for one side and not for the other is counter-productive and hypocritical.

“7)”Do they claim that every act of their enemy is a ”war crime”? Yes.” Look at the IDF again.”

War crimes are fairly well defined: use of human shields, storing weapons and/or fighting from “protected” locations such as schools, hospitals, places of worship and the like. Responsibility for those crimes is also fairly well defined. All that remains is for an independent and objective investigation by an unbiased third party—can you find one?

“Look, I’m not pro-Hamas but I’m definitely not pro-Israeli. These guys are both a bunch of creeps and frankly they can wipe each other off of the face of the map and unfortunately I think that’s exactly what they are going to do.

“Look, imagine you could somehow get back to Nazi Germany in 1935 lets say. What would you do? I would tell everyone, both Germans and Jews to get out of Europe.”

Read your history again. 1935 was already too late, Hitler was in power and the Nuremberg Laws had been enacted. What you describe is the mass emigration of fear, rather than trying to change dangerous trends. Eventually, there would be no where left to go if everyone felt that way.

“And I have the same advice for Palestinians and Jews in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, get the hell out of town before it’s too late.”

Again, where would they go?

“And for those people who say ”My grandfather died here, my father died here and I will die here.” I say,”yes, you surely will.”

Then I guess your only loyalty is to your own continued existence, no matter what else you have to concede to achieve that. If the founding fathers of the US had felt the way you do, you’d be a subject of Queen Elizabeth II, rather than a citizen of the USA.

“‘Once statehood was achieved, the leaders of both these groups (Menahem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir) made the transition from ”resistance fighter/terrorist” to statesman, and were even elected Prime Minister of Israel’

“‘... made the transition from ’resistance fighter/terrorist’ to statesman...’”?

“What is this supposed to mean? They were never caught by the British for their crimes? They join a terrorist AAA group and worked it all out in therapy? Tell me a revolutionary leader from George Washington to Fidel Castro who has not able to make the transition from ”resistance fighter/terrorist” to statesman after securing power. Your sentence is meaningless rhetoric.”

It means that they realized that the time for armed resistance was over and the time to work towards establishing a viable national entity had arrived. Think of Yasser Arafat, Yismael Hanyieh… both democratically elected, yet neither of them made the transition, and it seems neither of them even understood that a transition needed to be made. Neither of them has built anything, only continued the path of destruction.

“Dear Mr. Davidson, I’m sure as a resident of Israel you sincerely want peace. Of course you don’t need your family, loved ones or countrymen being attacked and killed. In America, we figured something out. To be inclusive. Everyone is welcome, of any religion, ethnicity, or race. In Israel, the people have made a comitment to be specifically, a ”Jewish” state. Though other groups and religions have rights, they are by law secondary to the Jewish religion and people.

“Frankly, this is a ”great” experiment. Can we create a discriminatory state that favors one people or religion over all others? I think you will find that no matter how light the secondary status maybe it will ultimately fail. If Israel wants to survive they will eventually have to make everyone equal before the law. Without a coup d’etat by the IDF I don’t see it happening. Equality means the same automobile license plates, the same obligations to serve in the military, etc. Unfortunately, or rather very fortunately, people will never bow down quietly to being unequal. Jewish history has proved this and Palestinian history will prove it as well.”

It’s hardly a “great experiment”, and how you can hold up a single Jewish state for examination, yet ignore the existence (and behavior) of 57 self-declared Islamic states, many of whom are theocracies and none of whom grants its minorities even the rights that Israel grants to its minorities, makes me wonder… Jews have been forced to “bow down quietly to being unequal” for more than two millennia, yet no one complained about it. The only complaints made come when “the Jews” are no longer second-class citizens in one single country in the world.

I despise double standards, and double standards are what are used on Israel far too often. It amazes me that those who read George Orwell’s “1984” are so amused at the sheep-like obedience of those practicing “doublethink”, yet it never seems to occur to them that they do the same thing themselves daily, often related to Israel, but even in their own interpersonal relationships—taking exception at someone else’s behavior while excusing the same behavior in themselves, for example.

The time has come to start comparing countries according to equal criteria. A good start would be by asking the same questions regarding both countries:

Have they improved their citizens’ standard of living?

Have they provided the appropriate services (healthcare, education, employment opportunities, housing, infrastructure, etc.) to their citizens?

Have they shown that they are willing to live in peace with their neighbors, domestic and foreign?

Do they provide equal opportunities to all their citizens?

Do they at least attempt to provide physical security for their citizens?

The list of questions could be short or long, but they must be asked about each of the parties equally, with answers evaluated by the same criteria. Why is that so difficult?

I don’t think that Israel is anywhere near perfect, and I have my own issues with “the system”, but I think that any reasonably objective comparison will point out a lot more shortcomings in the Palestinian Authority than in the Israeli government.

Think about it.

Dear Mr. Bilgrami,

Your “history” of Palestine is as one-sided as it is inaccurate. It sounds like a combination of excerpts from “Mein Kampf” and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine was granted to Great Britain after WW I, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, in 1919 and ratified in 1922. Prior to that, the British had negotiated with both Arabs and Jews living in Palestine to fight against the Ottomans, and made promises to both sides that the apparently never intended to keep. The Balfour Declaration was announced in 1917, while WW I was still going on.

Terrorism in Palestine began when Haj-Amin al-Husseini incited Arab riots against the Jews and British in 1920.

“…on April 4, 1920, 60,000-70,000 Arabs had already congregated in the city square, and groups of them had already been attacking Jews in the Old City’s alleys for over an hour; the Jews hid. Inflammatory anti-Zionist rhetoric was being delivered from the balcony of the Arab Club. One inciter was Hajj Amin al-Husayni;”

“Five Jews and four Arabs were killed, while wounded were 216 Jews, 18 critically; 23 Arabs, one critically; and seven British soldiers, all apparently beaten by an Arab mob. The majority of the victims were members of the old Yishuv, non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Palestine_riots)

So, to protest Jewish immigration to Palestine, Arabs rioted against Jews whose families had lived among the Arabs for generations.

Arab riots against Jews occurred again in 1929, again with Haj-Amin al-Husseini, now the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem” inciting them, and again during 1936 to 1939. At this time, the British outlawed Haj-Amin al-Husseini for his pro-Nazi incitement, He spent WW II in Germany as an “honored associate” of Adolph Hitler, raided Muslim SS divisions in Bosnia and was indicted for war crimes by Yugoslavia after WW II. He spent the remainder of his life in Egypt, which refused repeated extradition requests from the Yugoslav government to try him as a war criminal.

From the 1880s until after 1948, Jews bought land—land that was sold to them, often at exorbitant prices, by absentee landlords.
= = =
The “18% of the land” that was under discussion was 18% of the ENTIRE Palestine Mandate, which included what we now know as Jordan, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1922, Great Britain took all of the area east of the Jordan River and gave it to Abdallah I, the great-grandfather of the present King of Jordan, as “Trans-Jordan”. This unilateral “gift”, unsanctioned by the League of Nations, removed approximately 80% of the Mandate lands from the Mandate. Jews were not allowed by law to either buy land or live in this area. In 1923, an additional 2% of the Mandate’s land was ceded to France, which had the League of Nations Mandate for Syria, leaving 18% of the original Mandate west of the Jordan River for the Jews.

Oddly enough, the ONLY Palestinian web site that admits this dissection of the Mandate is Passia.org. Here’s the URL for their map page:
http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/1923-1948-british-mandate.html
(I’m giving you a Palestinian source so you can’t claim that it’s “Zionist propaganda”.)

The remainder of the Palestinian sources I have found act as if the land west of the Jordan River was the entirety of the Mandate.
= = =
The Irgun was an outlawed militant wing that broke off from the Hagana in 1931. Their bombing of the King David Hotel was intended to destroy records in the British archives. Three warnings to evacuate the building were made by telephone, one to the King David front desk, one to the French Consulate nearby and one to the Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post). All the warnings were ignored.

The bombers were disguised as Arabs because they were bringing milk cans into the hotel, which was normally done by Arab workers.

The bombing had no effect on the British leaving Palestine, which was decided more than a year later, after the UN vote on Resolution 181 for the partition of Palestine. The resolution gave the British a maximum of 6 months (up until 27 May, 1948) to leave Palestine. The last British soldier left Haifa port on 14 May, 1948.

Although the UN resolution partitioned the land into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, the Arab states refused to accept the UN resolution and armies from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Palestinian irregulars attacked Israel with the declared intention of “driving the Jews into the sea”.

Between the years 1920 and 1948 there were many acts of terrorism committed by both Arabs and Jews, yet you choose to highlight a single event. Where’s the balance?
= = =
I realize that this doesn’t exactly agree with your version of history. Feel free to investigate any number of libraries, web sites and book stores to find out for yourself whose version is closer to the truth.

A response to your diatribe against Zionism will be forthcoming in a day or two, when I have the time to prepare it.

@ Mr. Bilgrami:

If you don’t mind, I’ll just point out some of your inaccuracies. The blanket statements you make are again reminiscent of copy-paste from propaganda pamphlets.

“zionism is esentially racial discrimination at its peak. Nobody repeat Nobody other than those who believe in their ideology will be tolerated and no means spared to reach this objective.”

“Zionism” is a secular Jewish movement created by people who were themselves discriminated against in many ways. The basic idea was to “return to the land”, since many countries had laws preventing Jews from owning or working land. The idea of nationalism and a “Jewish state” came later, long after the first “Zionists” (they called themselves “pioneers”) arrived in Israel in the 1880s. The pioneers included anarchists, socialists, democrats and monarchists who just happened to be Jewish and discriminated againt in their native countries. Race was not part of the equation at all.

“On the other hand Judaism is very tolerable towards others and considers tactics practiced by zionist regime dimetrically opposite to their religion. New york has seen demonstration in this regard where orthodox jews have vocally condemned the actions of zionist state, to the extent that they say that the state of Israel is hijacked by the zionist regime.”

I assume you’re talking here about the Neturei Karta and some of the other extreme ultra-ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. Yes, they exist, as a fringe element whose numbers are negligible in comparison to the total number of world Jewry. They number less than 1%. You really should study them—as far as they’re concerned, no one who is not a member of their sect is a “true Jew”. In this, they resemble the extreme Islamic fanatics we read about in the media. They insist that Eretz Yisrael can only come into being when the Messiah comes. Naturally ANY secular ideology will be rejected by them, not just Zionism.

“Untill and unless the tolerance find roots and a concept of peaceful co-existence gain accpetance, there will be no peace in these regions.”

Yet we don’t hear a word from you about Islamic intolerance, only “the Jews” are to blame. It doesn’t matter what Israelis think or accept, until groups like Hamas and countries like Iran abandon their cherished dream of “wiping Israel off the map”. Remember, there are two sides to this coin… any unilateral action by Israel has always been used by its enemies against Israel. Witness the disengagement from Gaza… and Hamas used the “opportunity” to fire off more than 8,000 rockets at Israeli civilians over the past 4 years.

How about some tolerance on the Muslim side, too?

“Killing and innocent man equates to killing the whole Mankind, and saving a man equates as equal to saving the whole mankind”.

Actually, this is a paraphrase of a passage from the Mishnah Sanhedrin (a commentary on the Torah, or Judaic Bible):

“Therefore the human being was created on its own, to teach you that whoever destroys even one soul is regarded by the Torah as if he had destroyed an entire world; and whoever saves a soul is regarded as if he had saved an entire world.”

No mention is made of race, religion, color or any other identifying characteristic other than “human being”. On the other hand, doesn’t the Qur’an refer to Jews as “the descendants of pigs and apes”? We can hear this phrase almost weekly in Friday sermons from mosques, and it has the effect of denying that Jews are human—with the inference that it’s all right to kill a Jew… because “he isn’t human” according to the Imam.

“Today we conviniently blame Islamic Militancy and forget what were the causes that led to this response. Let me start by saying this, has world so easily forgotten that Osama Bin Laden was a Cia operative and Mujaheddins were created to deflect Soviet occupation. Use them loose them, well this time they didnt go out so peacefully. The dragon created has bitten the creator and it hurts. What happened later made everyone suffer including the US, its creator. Maybe it was a part of overall new world order doctrine that backfired. Unless root cause is not removed and grievances addressed we can fool ourselves to the limit and let the media manupulate us.”

Hardly “conveniently”, but what are you suggesting be done to correct mistakes already made? Looking through history, it’s hard to point to a time when an Islamic entity somewhere, was not at war with some other entity since Islam was founded. Because many of these wars were waged to conquer territory and new adherents to the religion, whether they were willing or not, I find it hard to believe that Islam (or any other religion) is the answer.

If you ask me, the root cause is religious extremism. Exactly how do you plan to address it without quite literally losing your head? No one had to “create” Osama bin Laden or the Mujahideen, because they already existed. If anything backfired, it was the “strategy” of using unpredictable “allies” who regarded both the USSR and the US as enemies. US foreign policy is full of mistakes like this, misunderstanding who its friends and enemies are and assigning them the same motives and code of ethics as the US politicians have.

In general, the CIA has run around the world acting like demented cowboys, making mistake after mistake, supporting dictators and toppling democracies in the name of “US policy”.

Make no mistake: when I say “religious extremism”, I include those “Christian Evangelists” who insist the world MUST become Christian, the Islamics who demand that the world become their brand of Muslim and both the Jews who demand a “Greater Israel” along with those who deny the state of Israel in the package.

The media can manipulate only those who are ready to be manipulated—those who insist on doing their own research and making up their own minds are much harder to manipulate. But the media are far from the only ones who manipulate people… religious leaders do it every day.

“I know your reply for zionism will also be full of justification from your perspective but is bloodshed part of your religion, not mine at at least.”

Bloodshed is part of neither Judaism nor Zionism, but self-defense is. Abba Evan, a former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs once said in the UN, “If the Arabs laid down their arms tomorrow, there would be peace. If Israel laid down its arms, tomorrow there would be no Israel.” I believe he was right, at least as things presently stand.

Perhaps Arabs will consider their destiny… is it eternal warfare with Israel or is it peace?

I believe that if the US or Russia or any other power tried, the Arabs would pick up their weapons again pretty fast.

US policy during the 50s, 60s and early 70s WAS demented. Fueled by McCarthyism and ”better dead than red”, the CIA worked to depose any democratically elected leader in the world whose opinions leaned too far left for the US State Department. How did Pinochet come to power in Chile? How did Brazil’s generals make a coup d’etat in 1964? The list goes on... the US interfered in Argentina, bolivia, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Syria and Uruguay to depose elected governments with military dictatorships.

Yes, I stand by my statement that the US policy over those years was demented and that the CIA ran around the world acting like demented cowboys deposing democratically elected governments. The countries mentioned above are only a small part of US interference in the affairs of other nations.

US interference was also diametrically opposed to the declared US policy of encouraging democracy around the world. Hypocrisy has generally been the unofficial policy of the US State Department.

Does being a ”superpower” give the US (or any other country) the right to interfere with the internal politics of another country? Basically, it’s just a ”super-sizing” of the schoolyard bully extorting the lunch money of weaker children.