December 2007

The horrific bombings in Algiers yesterday in which as many as 60 people were killed drives home a terrible point for all of us. Such acts of terrorism where innocent people – in this case United Nations employees, Algerian government workers and students – are killed in a senseless act of violence – must unexceptionally be condemned, their perpetrators immediately brought to justice.

The Algeria bombings are unfortunately just one example of the many other terrible acts of terrorism taking place in our world today. While the United States has successfully associated the word terrorism with the attacks of September 11, 2001 – which they were – terrorism has many faces and many facades behind which it hides.

In the international community, Israel has been conveniently excluded from the list of abhorred perpetrators of terrorist acts. On the contrary, it is one of the parties that rants and rages about the need to extricate terrorism from our midst, proposing harsh sanctions against those who supposedly embrace it.

While it is true that terrorism and terrorist groups should be penalized for their actions, it is unacceptable that the international community – the United States and its western allies in particular – have adopted such a blatant double standard in this regard. Yes, attacking innocent civilians on US soil is terror. But so is bombing Iraqi cities, leaving hundreds dead or injured and thousands more homeless and terrified. And so is occupying an entire people for over 40 years and all of the injustices this entails.

What is so baffling is how Israel seems to pull itself out of the equation so masterfully and cry wolf at the same time. In the eyes of the international community, it is perceived as the party under the constant threat of Palestinian terrorism; it is the sole Middle Eastern democracy in a sea of hostile neighbors with the threat of an even more hostile "nuclear" Iran looming over it.

But, as the old adage goes, "You can’t fool all of the people all of the time." There are those in the world who have begun to see Israel’s real face and have raised their voices against acts perpetrated by this state and its army, which could only be categorized as state-sanctioned terrorism.

Some in Britain seem to get it. In 2005, British legal experts along with a rights group named Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) pushed the envelope in the British legal system, persuading the court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli intelligence personnel, namely former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter for perpetrating war crimes against the Palestinians.

The incident in question was an Israeli air strike in 2002, ostensibly targeting Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh in Gaza City. The 1,000 kilogram bomb that was dropped on the apartment building where Shehadeh lived killed him as well as 15 others, including his wife, daughter and eight other children.

Today, the arrest warrant still stands and Dichter has cancelled trips and invitations to the UK to avoid being arrested "like a common criminal."

In 2001, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was summoned to a Belgian court for his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon. Approximately 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children were killed at the hands of the pro-Israeli Phalangist Lebanese army under the supervision of the occupying Israeli army. The lawsuit, which was raised by a group of Palestinian, Lebanese and Belgian human rights activists, was eventually dismissed by a Brussels appeals court in 2002.

There are hundreds of other individual endeavors seeking to expose the façade of victimization surrounding Israel, not only by the Palestinians themselves but other international parties, including conscientious Americans and Israelis who want the truth out. One website entitled, "If Americans Knew" offers concise and accurate information detailing the situation in the occupied territories, something that cannot be found in the mainstream media.

While not widely effective, these moves are still one tiny step in the right direction only if for the purpose of bringing the case of Israeli state terrorism into the courtroom and to the fore of international human rights discussions. Nevertheless, the biggest hurdle to overcome this semantic barrier and actually call "a rose a rose" is still in place. While one would think statistics speak for themselves – the number of unarmed Palestinians killed by Israeli military or settler violence is four times that of Israelis killed by Palestinian attacks – Israel, along with the US has masqueraded these atrocities under the legitimate pretext of "self-defense". Even the unspeakable killings of innocent children, even babies, are brushed aside as "regrettable" or unavoidable "collateral damage".

What cannot be emphasized enough is that terrorism does not come in one specific package. Yes, the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians, whether in Palestine, the United States, Algeria, Iraq or Madrid, is certainly the cruelest and most inhumane forms of terrorism. However, there are others which are so often overlooked or polished over as something else, something less obvious, like the occupation itself, or the cancerous and illegal settlement growths on confiscated Palestinian land.

Those who intend on carrying out acts of terror do not necessarily need to do them so outwardly, like bombing a subway or flying planes into two skyscrapers. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, terrorism is defined as "violent or destructive acts committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands." While Israel undoubtedly does this – 971 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the Intifada in 2000 – it also does so by continuing to subjugate an entire people to a military occupation, by building more illegal settlements on their land and engulfing, dividing and separating them with a nine-meter concrete wall.

Is it not obvious that Israel wants to coerce the Palestinians into a political settlement suitable to its own political and demographic needs? And in its quest to achieve this, does not the killing of Palestinians, confiscation of their land and herding them into tiny, cramped cantons fall right into the scheme?

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.