It depends.
Under the Clinton Administration, this country used violence and the threat of violence to attain the goal of breaking up David Koresh’s compound; to eliminate terrorism camps in the Sudan and Afghanistan by launching missles at them; and to stop aggression and genocide in Serbia.
Was the United States under Clinton a “terrorist state”?
I agree that national security is high up there. But looking at a map over Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, it’s hard not to conclude that land-grab is part of their motivation. If security was an overriding goal, those settlements would have been dismantled a long time ago - they can’t be good for the security of Israeli citizens. I’m also pretty sure that Israel’s actions are in part influenced by groups who don’t want to see a viable Palestinian state. I’m not familiar enough with their political situation to guess how influential those groups are at any specific time, though.
Does that mean that, according to your definition, a state which uses terror as a last resort is not a terrorist state? That seems like an impractical definition.
I really hope that it’s terrorism, and not retaliation. If they do it to achieve something, I can at least understand it. I’d have no respect at all for a state which used violence against civilians just for revenge.
IMO, terrorism against random civilians is never justified. Not when Palestinians does it, not when Israel does it. Never.
As I mentioned in my last post, I could regard terrorism against specifically selected civilian targets as justified, under some (extreme) circumstances.
Well, their current tactics don’t seem too viable either, do they? Anyway, that’s not really relevant to the question in the OP. It might be that Israel’s only viable alternative is terrorism, but that doesn’t mean that terrorist acts suddenly change and become non-terrorist acts.
I’d like to mention that I do support Israel’s right to exist. I just don’t think they (or anyone else, including Palestinians) have any right to kill random civilians.
If that violence was knowingly targeted towards civilians, my answer is “yes”. Using terrorism to stop genocide might be justified. It would still be terrorism.
Since neither David Koresh nor Osama bin Laden and the members of Al-Qaeda being targeted were members of the military of their country, then you are stating that the United States under Clinton was a terrorist regime.
No, it hinges on your definition of ‘terror’…‘terror’ being in the eye of the beholder.
Show me where Israel arbitrarily uses ‘violence against civilians just for revenge’…hell, show me where Israel uses ‘terror’ for that matter. You seem to be defining ‘terror’ so loosely that you are quite correct…Israel IS a terrorist state. So is every single nation on earth by such ridiculous definitions. Ok…we are all terrorists states. What exactly does that get you?
True enough…problem is, you have failed thus far to SHOW that Israel has perpetrated DELIBERATE ‘terrorism against random civilians’…whereas its pretty obvious that Palestinians do just that as a matter of policy.
What about their tactics hasn’t been viable from a real world perspective hildea? I mean…they are still there, correct? They still have a viable nation, correct? They still have a working economy, correct? They aren’t in any imminent danger of collapse as far as I know, correct? (Palestine though…I don’t really see what THEIR acts are achieving to be honest).
I’m not saying here that Israel has done no wrong, or that they are innocent…they aren’t.
Again though, you’ve failed to SHOW that Israel’s acts are ‘terrorism’…you’ve merely CLAIMED that they are. By your own definition of ‘terror’ of course.
-XT
To Zagadka and Reeder (and to Sevastopol, if you’re listening, and to BrainGlutton, if you’re listening, and to any other anti-Israel gentlemen, if you’re listening,) I have only one question, and I am genuinely curious as to your answer.
The question is this: how should Israel respond to Arab terrorism? What could they do to respond to the terrorism without being “state terrorists” themselves?
If you’re planning on saying (and I suspect that you are) that Israel should respond by giving up all of the territories, capitulating to the Arabs, then I ask you, how should they respond to the terror that will surely continue? By doing nothing?
I think it goes much further than that. A “Terrorist State” sounds to me like a nation that does something beyond a mere occational dabble in shady or excessive use of violence or terrorism (whatever that is). A Terrorist State is a state with an ingrained ideology of terrorism, terrorism its main purpose and raison d’être. A state which first and primary respons to any challenge is terrorism.
It is undeniable that Israel has blood on her hands. All nations have dirty laundry, and only an extranordiry naïve person would believe Israel has escaped the brutalization that inevitable follow conflict and war – and Israel has had more of that than few others. However from that, to saying it’s a Terrorist State is a long long way. And it’s just too easy to say Israel shouldn’t do this or that, without coming up with realistic alternatives.
I think if phen had wanted a reasoned discussion of Israel’s use of force and wheter is’s excessive or Israels right to exist even, he would have been better served with a less provocative OP. Is France a Murder Nation?, Is The UN a Crime Club, Is the Palestenians a Terrorist People?, Is Islam a Beheading Religon, Is the US a torture nation?, Is Israel a Terrorist State? …bah
Share the land.
How? Which land? Should half the Israelis emigrate out so that Palestinians can take thier place?
What land? Isarel proper or Gaza & The West Bank? Sharing Israel with all the Palestenians would mean an end to Israel as a nation with Jewish roots. Are you proposing that Israel terminate itself?
Anyway Hamas is not interested in sharing. They want it all.
Good solution. Of course, the devil is in the details. Ignoring for a second the history of the region (i.e. the arabs in the area weren’t too keen on ‘sharing’ either before or after Israel was formed…until they got spanked repeatedly and decided that maybe there was something to this whole ‘sharing’ thing after all), and ignoring the fact that the Palestinian’s COULD have had a sharing the land solution long ago but rejected it because they didn’t want to negotiate with Israel (and thus ‘legitimize’ them…granted it was the other arab powers urging them to do this, but still they had the final word…or their more militant leaders did), how exactly would you go about sharing the land so that everyone would be happy? How would you go about getting the more militant factions of the Palestinian’s to agree to any compromise with Israel that doesn’t include the deaths of all its citizens and the siezure of all its lands? How would you be able to come up with a proposal that would alleviate Israel’s fears of not only of continued Palestinian attacks but of renewed attacks by the other nations in the region?
Its rather easy to spout off a ‘share the land’ sound bite as if the solution is that if only Israel would learn to share everything would be sweetness and light. Unfortunately it rather ignores that pesky reality stuff. But…you’d make a good European. 
-XT
p.s. can anyone give me a good reason exactly WHY there has to be a Palestinian state in any event? There was never a Palestinian nation before after all, or a Palestinian people for that matter (at least not in recent history)…that entire region was most recently ‘legitimately’ owned by the Ottoman’s after all. If anything, I’d think maybe the Turks should have first dibs on getting the whole lot back.
To be less flip though, the Palestinians chose to flee to the other arab powers in the '48 war…don’t you think its time that THEY did something as far as ending this ridiculous refugee situation of their own making?? Why does no one ever hit THEM up for aid, and to either incorporate the refugees into their own nations or to grant lands from their own borders? One has to wonder sometimes…
Jordan attempted to incorporate the Palestinians but that led to a powergrab against the Hashemites. The Palestinians were routed and they are now used, effectively, as political pawns by their co-religionist neighbours.
No, I’d say not. But they sometimes come uncomfortably close. Some of the attacks done in the very early history of Modern Isreal were arguably Terrorist.
And once again, the lesson is that “terrorist” is a meaningless term used to avoid debate. The real heart of the matter is whether the individual accepts the ends for which the horrors are committed. To those who don’t accept Israel’s right to exist, Israel is a terrorist state. To those who don’t accept the Palestinians’ right to exist, they are terrorists. And to those of use who think they’re all a pack of rabid genocidal loons who make a mockery of human civilization, they both are or neither are.
There is no solution for the problem. They are just going to slaughter each other from now till the end of time. If you want it to end, nuke the Holy Land flat. I’m perfectly content for both sides to kill each other by the thousands, provided I see no means to stop it and I’m not asked to assist in it. Since I am asked to assist in it by funding Israel and giving them access to my nation’s market for arms, I am not content.
I would say terrorism is mainly trying to blow up/kill/maim civilians, as opposed to trying to do the same mainly to armed and dangerous gunmen or known military leaders.
When has Israel randomly blown up a bus full of Arabs? Blown up a school with nobody but Arab children inside? Bombed a disco club or pizza parlor with NO known terrorists or enemy combatants within?
For a truly great illustration of the difference between soldier and terrorist, look at this image. In my opinion, it’s all summed up right there.
I’ll have to retract my answer to John Corrado’s question, at least until I’ve looked more into it. It doesn’t make sense to define violence and/or threats directly against specific individuals as terrorism. Otherwise law enforcement would fit the definition, and that obviously makes the definition useless.
A tentative new definition:
You misunderstand me - or perhaps we misunderstand each other. You stated in an earlier post:
I thought you meant that what Israel does is, in your opinion, “retaliation”, not “terror”. I meant to state that I disagree, that what they do is IMO “terror”, not “retaliation”, and that I see “retaliation” as worse than “terror”, because “terror” at least has a goal which can be defensible, even if the methods usually aren’t. It seems I’ve misunderstood what you were intending to say.
You don’t agree that Israel’s army kills and wounds a lot of Palestinian civilians? I thought that was obvious, common knowledge. Amnesty International: cite, cite, cite, Human Rights Watch: (cite, cite). Or do you agree that they kill them, but disagree with the “deliberate” part? IMO, there’s a limit to how many times you (generic you) can do something (say try to kill a specific target by firing into a mass of people), learn that you’ve killed a lot of innocent bystanders, say “oops, I didn’t mean to kill them, that was an accident”, and then proceed to do exactly the same thing - and still be expected to be believed the next time you say “oops”.
(Oh, and just to repeat myself: I’m still aware that Palestinans commit acts of terror. Lots of them. I still don’t defend that.)
The nation Israel is viable, yes. I was talking about the specific tactic of killing and wounding random civilians. A tactic which doesn’t lead to the result you want (I assume most Israelis would like to see some kind of movement in the direction of a lasting peace), and has an extremely high cost in number of lives doesn’t seem viable to me.
Um, yes, I said that the definition I used was one I had chosen (from those listed at dictionary.com). I didn’t claim that it was the only possible definition of terrorism. I’d be interested in seeing others. Yours, for instance.
I can agree that my first definition of “terrorist state” was to broad. I think you go too far in the other direction - are there any terrorist states on the planet, according to your definition?
Terrorism is the use of violence or threat thereof against civilians in order to obtain specific goals. By this definition both Palestinians and Israelis are involved in terrorism and have been for considerable time, leaving aside several foolish arguments brought up in this discussion, including cheap appeals to emotion, allegories of rape, etc.
Palestinian militants – which are cranked out wholesale thanks to the stubborn militant stupidity of Israeli hardline policies – do indeed target civilians and commit atrocities against innocents. Instead of whining idiotically and finding ever more ways to demonize Arabs, one could exercise a few brain cells and ask what the root of the problem is, and how/if it may be resolved in a manner of some basic intelligence as opposed to self-righteous knee-jerk machismo. But that might actually take you somewhere, or, worse, take you somewhere you are not particularly keen on going.
The Israeli government – which is repeatedly inflamed by the tactics adopted by Palestinian militants – does indeed engage in several practices including apartheid, assassination (domestic as well as international), and collective civilian punishment. The custom of collective punishment alone is enough to earn the terrorist label, should one wish to apply it, because the practice depends on instilling fear in civilian populations by attacking them or abusing them in a variety of manners, ranging from bulldozing civilian homes to unleashing the helicopter attacks, to firing into a crowd of protesters.
I know it’s difficult for the particularly obtuse among us, but let’s try to move away from navel-gazing at the past in a highly selective manner, bringing up conflicts of the last 40-odd years to demonstrate how Israel must be right in their reprehensible approach. The foundations of textbook-definition terror in Israel and Palestine originate from Jewish actions as well for crying out loud. So let’s drop the hypocrisy just for once and remember with fondness such groups as Irgun/Etzel from the early 1930s, which in 1936 was secretly supported (with funds, weapons, and training) by Poland so as to set up a Zionist state in Palestine and thus allow Poland to offload its Jews there. Until 1948, Irgun was responsible for bombing several targets and killing thousands of civilians, including and especially high-traffic targets such as hotels, restaurants, and marketplaces (sound familiar?), not to mention international targets such as the British embassy in Rome (sound familiar?). The Brits considered them a terrorist organization, as did anyone with a shred of common sense. To many Jews – particularly those ignorant or simply cretinous – they were “freedom fighters”. Irgun was eventually incorporated into the Israeli Defence Force, which helps explain the hawkisness of hardline Israelis that persists to this day. One of Irgun’s leaders later became Prime Minister of Israel, which also doesn’t say a whole lot about the fundamentals of Israel, historically and politically speaking.
There are also other venerable Israeli terrorist groups (although today most hawks are actually in government and don’t necessarily need to form distinct terrorist organizations) so let’s drop the false innocence repeatedly expressed on these matters already. Both sides are thoroughly guilty of employing terror tactics. In the case of the Jewish side, they merely have a longer and more distinguished history, better resources, and the ability to argue persuasively that their actons are somehow justified (though such persuasion routinely fails to impress the vast majority of the planet ex-US).
The way forward – and I really hope to see one soon instead of more self-interested dithering – doesn’t involve childish and ignorant recriminations, but the honest and open acceptance of the situation. I think everyone here agrees that Palestinians are involved in overt terrorism; it would be a constructive step for categorical nay-sayers to admit as much of the Israeli side, which is certainly not deserving of laurels and accolades as far as these matters are concerned. Israel also makes recourse to techniques of terrorism. Right or wrong, this is one of the drivers of the problem.
As I expected, nobody really answered my question, which was addressed to Zagadka, Reeder and any other anti-Israel gents.
The question was “how should Israel respond to Arab terrorism?”
All the whining and bellyaching and references to the Irgun and the “Zionist Terror Organizations” that existed half a century ago don’t answer the question. The fact that all we have here is silence in response to my question should surprise nobody.
What surprises no one, I wager, is that you are again complaining about this subject, and resorting to terms like “anti-Israeli gents” in lieu of real arguments and sustainable positions. Although I must say I notice a distinct improvement compared to your posts a few months ago, keep striving forward, young Jedi.
Let me ask you if you honestly think the situation is really so simple that a convenient capsule solution could be provided to a simplistic question such as yours. Honestly.
Of course not. We have here a problem involving a vicious cycle of violence, there is no simple solution – as I think you should know, given your obvious interest in the matter. On one side you have a disposessed people living in squalor and poverty for several decades, hemmed in by the more powerful occupiers and relegated to second-class citizen status, with their egos in the toilet (to put it mildly). Only a complete idiot would expect goodwill and flowers to arise from such conditions, though I don’t deny that this debate does routinely attract complete idiots.
On the other side we have a powerful sovereign state who has the opportunity and the resources to take the high road, but is normally prevented from doing so in a meaningful manner by the assholes who represent the Right in Israel, and who have no problems with domestic and international assassination, collective punishment, and apartheid. Strongarm tactics that, if anything, make the problem worse. This is particularly sad because there is no shortage of people in Israel who want to see a reasonable solution.
The simple answer as I see it (though there isn’t one by definition) is to neutralize the various assholes of the Israeli right, move to build trust (thereby reducing the perceived need for Palestinian militant action/organizations who will simply retreat underground if you attempt to destroy them), and hope that this is enough to proceed towards a solution agreeable to both parties. Of course, along the way one must also improve as much as possible the conditions most Palestinians live under – poverty simply breeds more discontent – and educate the populations of both sides thoroughly, in my personal preference by eliminating the fundamental ignorance of fundamentalist religious dogma, while implemting integration exercises. And rein those damn settlers in once and for all, the whole settlement approach in Israel is revolting – used as expansionist/territorial tools, much the way castles and keeps were used in feudal systems in Europe to consolidate claim over a territory.
This matter will be resolved by negotiation, and not by force, no matter how many wet dreams radicals may have on the topic. Negotiation involves specific preliminary steps necessary to the research of ANY solution, which is why your question asking for an easy answer is facile.
To negotiate successfully, first you must promote confidence building between all parties. Secondly you must promote clarity and accuracy so that all parties are reading more or less from the same page. Third you must promote understanding, and make it clear to both parties why the present situation is unacceptable, so that both parties understand both points of view and not simply their own. Then, and only then, can you attempt to move forward by investigating possible solutions to achieve common ground. This process has been attempted a few times, and has resulted in another common negotiation problem: deadlock. Breaking deadlock is an art all by itself, one where both Israelis and Palestinians have failed miserably in the past; the chief problem as I saw it was that Israelis were simply unwilling to put enough trust in the various tools normally used to break deadlock (coalition building, removed/subgroup discussion, shuttle mediation, referendums, consensus, concultation, mandates, etc.). The lack of trust, IMO, was due to the likelihood that certain Israelis were unlikely to obtain what they wanted from these tools, as many of them were dependent not simply on Israeli will, but on international scrutiny (including by the dreaded human rights organizations).
So it’s really not an easy issue. Presenting it as a case of one side “murdering” the other is vulgarly stupid on this board and in this forum in particular.
Discussion works as long as there is agreement on what is non-negotiable. For the Israelis, this would include their right to exist, and to exist in modern day Israel. For Palestinians, this would include their right to their own state in currently occupied lands.
If both sides agree to that (no easy task), then discussions on thorny issues (and likely sticking points, such as Jerusalem and border arrangements) can be attempted.
No, like I don’t think the Palestinians is a Terrorist People. Perhaps Saddam’s Iraq was a terror regime. Stalin’s Soviet, Maoist China and to some extend Nazi Germany were terror states. One might call the US a Capitalist Nation or a Democratic State. But does anyone really think terrorism is as ingrained and dear to the Israelis as capitalism and democracy is to the Americans? Also, I think it should take something more to label a people with something negative (terrorist) than something positive (capitalism, democracy). Most of all it reminds me of all those Israel=Nazi stickers I see around. But surely anyone who think Israel is a Terrorist State must also think the Palestinians are a Terrorist People (People for lack of a State).
aw. Like you say at the end. Let’s see if we can be a little more even-handed in laying out blame and causes. One might think the Palestinian terrorist groups bear a little bit of the responsibility too, the culture amongst the Palestinians, the Islamists stupidity of jihad and 72 virgins, or the other Arab states who use them in their own little Machiavellian game, the leftist groups in the West which has no problem fuelling the confrontation by funding the terrorists, etc. or what, the terrorists themselves even. However when it comes to moral responsibility, it’s absolutely crystal clear - only one part bears blame: the terrorists themselves. Anything else stinks to high heaven of blaming the victim.
