Israeli-American journalist Nir Rosen has an excellent piece in The Guardian on the continuing, vicious Israeli attack on Gaza. In addition to providing a better understanding of the overall conflict, he skillfully deconstructs the entire notion of the word “terrorism.”
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims’ struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
