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Why is it that any Palestinian response to Israeli assaults is termed as 'terrorism'?
Posted: Wednesday, May 8, 2002
By David K. Stone
In order to comprehend the situation one must first realise that it is all about TIME.
One must understand that we are informed that Palestinians are considered as terrorists, in this tit-for-tat war, because they use suicide bombers. However, anyone with half an eye can see that the Palestinians are RETALIATING against Israeli actions with the limited low-tech means they have available to them.
Now, should this war have been fought on a level playing field, in terms of the Palestinians being armed in a similar fashion to the Israelis, and that RETALIATION made by the Palestinians being made with attack helicopters ASAP after the Israeli assault, the words "terrorist" or "terrorism" would not be uttered by the Israeli government, or they would at least have second thoughts upon their use as they would realise that the press would not allow such a label because the Palestinian response would come quickly after an Israeli assault and be from an equally mechanised force. Therefore, demonstrative of a 'REAL' war, rather than this one-sided beating the Israelis regularly meet out on the population of Palestine.
However, the Palestinians are limited by the low-tech nature of any response they can make. Consequently, the Palestinians end up with a time lag of days or weeks between an Israeli assault and the their own response.
This is what enables the Israelis to call the legitimate Palestinian resistance 'terrorists'. Moreover, most people forget to notice, and the media often forgets to mention, that Palestinian attacks are usually a response to a particular 'Israeli action' separated by time.
The Palestinian response does not have the ability to helicopter-off a launch pad, as do the Israelis, and fly directly to its target before firing its rockets or bombs. The Palestinian response must first figure out a way of getting an individual, armed with a bomb, through a checkpoint and eventually to his or her target.
This takes planning and - more importantly - TIME.
Therefore, I urge people not to forget that the Palestinians are the injured party. They are the OCCUPIED and not the OCCUPIER. They respond to an assault as quickly as they can in their limited low-tech fashion and this response should be seen for what it is - A RESPONSE TO ISRAELI ASSAULTS on the people and land of Palestine by an illegal occupying force which is (under international law) guilty of breaking the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights by denying the Palestinians the right of self determination, being in breech of more UN SCRs than any other country in the world (without being punished), being in breech of the Fourth Geneva Convention, being in breech (on a multitude of occasions) of its agreements with the American government regarding the non-offensive use of the weapons sold by the US to Israel against civilian populations, and whose current leader is accredited (by an Israeli court) with the responsibility for the Sabra-Chatila massacre in 1982.
And we have not even begun to scratch the surface of the human rights violations and abuses visited by the Israelis upon innocent Palestinian civilians.
So, for the sake of history and in the hope of not being one of those people (similar to the Germans after the war) who says, "I never knew what was going on. They didn't tell us about the camps, the torture and murder of men, women, children, and infants. They never told us that it was all because of the Israelis trying to steal all the land from the Palestinians and either killing them or pushing them out of their land and homes." Take care how you label people, their actions, and their struggle. Remember, the majority view is often wrong. Especially, when propaganda fills the air like confetti. Be warned. You have been told
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