Naked
Terrorism
By Ghali Hassan
03 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
‘Terrorism’
means activities that - (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to
human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States
or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed
within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;(B) appear
to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;(ii)
to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion;
or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction,
assassination, or kidnapping. United State Code Title 18, Section 2331.
Since its creation by Western
powers and Zionists in 1948, Israel has used terrorism to terrorise
the native population (the Palestinians) and expand. It uses terrorism
to threat, coerce and intimidate its neighbours. Under international
law Israel is a terrorist state and must be condemned.
According to Article 2(4)
of the UN Charter; “All members [of the UN] shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any
manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.
The UN is also very specific about the right of people’s resistance
to aggression. Here, the people of Lebanon (and the Palestinians) have
‘unalienable rights’ to defend themselves and to resist
Israeli aggression by all means available to them.
Every Israeli act of terrorism
is financed and supported by Israel’s Western allies, the U.S.
and Britain in particular. Moreover, whatever Israel does, it does openly
in the name of all Jews, and it uses the crimes committed against Jews
by Europeans in the past to justify its acts of terrorism and vilify
any criticism as “anti-Semitism”. Jews around the world
– with a few honourable exceptions – have financed and supported
Israel’s war crimes against defenceless population.
For their part, European
leaders have vehemently supported Israeli action, because Israeli action
of playing victim covers-up the existence of European crimes against
Jews. In addition, any legitimate resistance to Israel’ acts of
terrorism is labelled “terrorism” to justify greater terrorism.
Furthermore, Israel can count
on its powerful Western allies, particularly the U.S and Britain, for
unconditional political, massive financial and military support. Hence,
in a short period of time, Israel built the strongest army in the region,
if not one of the strongest in the world. Israel’s arsenal of
weapons includes nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. With the
support of its Western allies, Israel is rarely condemned for its acts
of terrorism and war crimes, even when Israel kills UN peacekeepers
from countries such as Canada, Austria and Finland.
Israel also has an army of
Western intellectuals and scholars placed in higher positions in the
U.S. and Europe, who are ready to shield Israel and deflect the main
responsibility of Israel’s war crimes on the U.S. They alleged
that Israel is an “innocent bystander” and is simply a U.S.
proxy force serving U.S. imperialist interests. This is simply a falsehood.
Although Israel is close ally of the U.S. and the U.S. can impose punitive
measures on Israel, Israel can renounce violence and pursue a destiny
of peaceful coexistence.
Unmentioned is also Israel’s
militarised and extremely fanatic society. Most Israelis support Israel’s
aggression against defenceless Arab population regardless of the pretext.
Indeed, Israeli children are manipulated to the extent that they are
often taken on tours during war to view weapons and are encouraged to
write hate messages on the missiles and bombs that were destined to
kill innocent Lebanese and Palestinian children.
For nearly six decades, Israel
has violated every international law, every humanitarian law and every
UN Resolution. It does so with the tacit support of Western powers,
the U.S. and Britain in particular. For decades, Israel routinely conducted
terrorism attacks in Lebanon, including bombing and shelling of refugee
camps, terrorist raids and assassinations of Lebanese and Palestinian
politicians and activists in Beirut and elsewhere, invasion of Lebanon
in 1978, and the occupation of Lebanon in 1982.
To get away with terrorism,
Israel uses the crimes committed against Jews by West Europeans to justify
its acts of terrorism and vilify any criticism of its terror as “anti-Semitism”.
Europeans have vehemently supported Israeli action, because Israeli
action of playing victim remove the guilt and covers-up the existence
of European crimes against Jews. In addition, any legitimate resistance
to Israel’ terror is labelled “terrorism” in order
to justify greater terrorism.
In playing victim, Israel
manipulates and uses the mainstream (mass) media – inherently
pro-Israel, and anti-Arabs and Muslims – in very sophisticated
and efficient way to portray its acts of terrorism as “self-defence”
and at the same time demonise its victims as “Untermenschen”
or subhumans – in the same way Nazis demonised Jews – whose
lives are cheaper than Jewish ones. The task is made easy by the fact
that most of the mainstream media are own by either pro-Israel Jews
or by pro-Israel Zionists concentrated mostly in the U.S. and in Britain
with a global audience.
When Lebanese (or Palestinian)
civilians are killed by Israel’s acts of terrorism, Israeli propagandists
and Western media immediately exonerate Israel by blaming resistance
fighters of using civilians as “human shields”. As it is
happen in the current Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Israeli and
Western media are deliberately distorting the facts and blaming the
Hizbullah resistance fighters of hiding among the civilian population.
However, reports from the ground in Lebanon consistently show that Israeli
claims are always false. Firstly, knowing that they risk being betrayed
by collaborators, Hizbullah’s fighters go to great length to avoid
contacts with civilians and stay as far away from civilians as possible.
Secondly, rockets and missiles are fired from open spaces and could
not be fired from built-up areas.
Furthermore, Israeli soldiers
are well-known and publicly use Palestinian children to shield them
when attacking Palestinian resistance. In fact the currents Israeli
aggression on Lebanon – a defenceless nation – is designed
to coerce not only the Lebanese people to rise up against Hizbullah,
but also to blackmail other nations and to use the war as a rehearsal
for a region-wide war against Iran or Syria.
Such is the case on Sunday
30 July 2006. When Israeli war planes (U.S.-made F-16s) bombed a shelter
housing refugees in the village of Qana – the site of a 1996 massacre
of more than 100 Lebanese civilians by Israeli forces – killing
more than 60 innocent civilians, including at least 40 children, a war
crimes by any standard, Israeli propagandists and Western media tried
to exonerate Israel by claiming that Hizbullah were firing rocket from
the site.
Also ignored by the media
are Israel’s indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructure
and population centres, using banned weapons such as Cluster bombs and
incendiary white phosphorous bombs against defenceless population in
contravention of international humanitarian laws. According to conservative
estimate, the current Israeli act of terrorism on Lebanon killed at
least 800 innocent Lebanese civilians, although journalists on the ground
put the figure much higher, injured more than 4000 and caused the displacement
of a million people. As always, more than a third of the victims are
innocent children. Be Lebanese or Palestinians, Israel dose not discriminate
between civilians and combatants, a flagrant violation of the Geneva
and The Hague Conventions.
Like Israel’s previous
acts of terrorism, the pretext to justify the current terrorism attacks
against Lebanon is that Israel was allegedly provoked by the Lebanese
resistance crossing into Israel and capturing two Israel soldiers. However,
contrary to Israel’s propaganda which is becoming a global propaganda,
the Israeli soldiers were captured and taken prisoners on Lebanese side
of the border in purely heroic operation. The other Israeli soldiers
were not killed by Hizbullah’s fighters, but rather because their
tank rolled over a landmine – planted by Israel – while
pursuing Hizbullah’s fighters. In sharp contrast from earlier
Israel’s response to previous tit for tat skirmish between Hizbullah
and the Israeli army, Israel held the Government of Lebanon responsible
and instigated a total war against the entire state of Lebanon.
The current Israeli aggression
against Lebanon is a U.S.-Israel engineered war planned long time ago.
It is a premeditated U.S.-Israel aggression aimed at imposing a “New
Middle East", where Lebanon, like Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and today’s Iraq would be under U.S.-Israeli domination
or hegemony. To use Antonio Gramsci’s conception of hegemony,
where an oppressive power structure, in which the domination is concealed
through an Arab façade and the consent of the oppressed, is not
coerced; rather it is consensual and the oppressed are complicit in
their oppression. The dominant ways have become naturalised and normalised.
The same form of power was tried during Fascism’s occupation of
Europe.
The U.S. refusal to condemn
or at least allows the UN to condemn Israel’s “disproportionate”
use of violence against civilians is evident that the U.S. is complicit
in Israel’s war crimes. Israel’s “disproportionate”
use of violence violates the basic tenets of the laws of war. Indeed,
the Geneva and The Hague Conventions prohibit the use of military force
that causes “collateral damage” to civilian infrastructure
that is disproportionate to the military value of the objective.
As mentioned earlier, Israel
uses violence to coerce and threat the population in order “to
attain” its goals. However, the Lebanese people (regardless of
their affiliation) seem to be undeterred by Israel’s acts of terrorism.
According to a recent opinion poll conducted by the Centre for Research
and Information in Beirut, 87 % of all Lebanese support Hizbullah's
resistance against Israel. The poll includes some 80% of all Christian
respondents, 80 % of all Druze respondents, and 89% of all “Sunni”
Lebanese. The poll also shows that 89.5 % of respondents believe the
U.S. was not an “honest broker”. This is far more than George
Bush and Tony Blair can master together in their countries. As revealed
by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the American University in Beirut,
only 8% of Lebanese see the U.S. playing an honest role. Most Lebanese
see the U.S. as being complicit in Israel’s terror against Lebanon
and want to join the Hizbullah resistance to defend their nation against
Israel’s aggression.
Finally, while Israel and
its allies (U.S. and Britain) demanding that Lebanon implement UN Resolution
1559 to disarm Hizbullah, Israel refuses to implement countless UN Resolutions
passed against it, including Resolution 638, which is calling for the
“immediate safe release of all hostages and abducted persons [including
10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese among them are hundreds of women and
children] wherever and by whomever they are being held”, the well-known
Resolution 242, which is demanding Israel to withdraw from all Arab
lands – including Palestinian land, Lebanese land (the Shebaa
farms), and the Syrian Golan Height, seized in Israel’s pre-emptive
aggression (a.k.a. terrorism) in 1967 –, and Resolution 194 calling
for the ‘right of return’ for all Palestinian refugees to
their land, to mention just three. In fact UN Resolution 1559 was an
illegitimate Resolution because it infringes on the sovereignty of Lebanon
by requesting the disarmament of a legitimate resistance movement. Why
the UN is unable to force Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire?
Regardless of what Britain, U.S. and Israel think of the Lebanese people,
a cease-fire is a paramount starting point to peace and to save innocent
civilian lives.
Terrorism must be treated
as terrorism, regardless who is the perpetrator. Westerners can not
pretend to fight terrorism while at the same time remain complicit in
Israel’s ongoing acts of terrorism.
As long as Westerners continue
to play double standard and ignore their complicity in terrorism, Israel
and its leaders will remain an obstacle to world peace.
Ghali Hassan
lives in Perth, Western Australia.