A Definition Crisis: Terror Or Resistance

By Ali Al-Hail

Al-Jazeerah
December 3, 2004

In their statements American officials and to some extent European
Union representatives give the impression that they are fanatically
preoccupied with the concept of `terrorists’ when referring to
Palestinians who get brutally massacred in Gaza almost every day by
Israel.

Though amongst them infants, adolescents and children in general,
those governmental agents don’t seem to make a distinction between an
innocent child or an infant and an adult as long as they all are
Palestinians, persisting on liberating their land and refusing to go
away.

This is sufficiently enough to make those agents lumping all sections
of Palestinians together. How dare these people have the
`luxury’ of such a `wishful thinking’?!

A week or even a day doesn’t pass over without Israel firing missiles
from American-made Apache helicopters on people in Gaza or without
demolishing homes here or there in the Palestinian lands
or… or… etc.

>From the representatives’ point of view that is `all acts of
self defense’ and `they (Israeli soldiers) have to react’ as
Fulbright used to say. Reacting against whom? A group of children
throwing `not grenades’ but stones on tanks and solidly-armed
soldiers occupying their land since 1967, which is the oldest ever
occupation on earth?

And reacting how? By firing live ammunitions and intimidating children
(with every right on earth to resist occupation) with tanks? Isn’t
that view of those politicians at least, sounds odd and incongruous?
How on earth can some one defending herhis land be portrayed as
`terrorist’?

And by whom? By people who are supposed to represent `constitutions’
of `the civilized and modern world’ in which `Resisting the occupying
forces and Liberating the land’ is embedded with triumph and
jubilation. The view of those politicians is emphatically and
definitely inconsistent and paradoxical. Ifthe Palestinians had not
consistently, pursued their cause since the Israeli occupation of
Palestine in 1947, The Palestinian cause would have been faced the
same fate the Armenian cause had.

By this understanding held by those politicians, Israel has the right
to remain in Palestinian and other Arab lands.

Neither is any body amongst the new allies against `terror’has
the guts to categorize Israel’s massacres as `acts of terror’
(up to this minute, Israel killed approximately, 3000 Palestinian
infants, adolescents and children asa whole, about 5000 children,
adolescents and infants casualties, up to 400 children and adolescents
in jail, plus 12,000 murdered adults including women and about 8000
men and women in prison since September 28, 2000), nor are the
Generals in Israel who give the orders with cold nerves to carry out
the massacres described as `terrorists’. What a wonderful New
World Order we have been subjected to?!!!

Having said that however, I am still, (despite the definition crisis
on what is terror and what is resistance) adamant that the USA in
particular and the EU in general have the potential and the capability
to become the impartialand fair leader of a free world–not the killer
of other nations. Either directly as it is the case in Afghanistan and
Iraq or indirectly as it is the daily case in Gaza and West Bank.

Professor Ali Al-Hail

Professor of Mass Communications

Board Member of AUSACE, Member of ASC, IABD, IMDA, AEJMC, BEA, NEBAA

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress