by Ting Huang
The 2024 Israel-Lebanon conflict is now in full force following the events on September 17th and 18th, during which Israel remotely detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon belonging to members of Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group. This was one of the more recent significant attempts by Israel to escalate war with its regional neighbors while it continues to commit genocide in Gaza. The devices exploded in crowded shopping districts, public thoroughfares, busy roads, as well as in schools, homes, and hospitals – maiming thousands and killing over 40 people, including a 9-year-old girl. Mainstream media was quick to whitewash the indiscriminate nature of the attack, while others have called Israel’s actions “terrorism.”
What Israel did was, arguably, a terrorist attack. According to the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) terrorism involves, at minimum, the “intimidation or coercion of populations or governments through the threat or perpetration of violence, causing death, serious injury or the taking of hostages.” The New York Times even reported the attack as having been “without a strategic goal.” It isn’t controversial to say Israel’s attack violated international humanitarian law. The plan included the use of booby-traps disguised as harmless objects and the spreading of terror among civilians – both war crimes according to the UN. While US media has framed Israel’s actions as a reasonable response to a terrorist aggressor, recent historical events – such as Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 – muddies that narrative. An article titled, “Is Lebanon part of Israel’s promised territory?,” published, then retracted, by the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post on September 25th, and Israel’s subsequent ground invasion of Lebanon on October 1st, both suggest the situation is not as clear-cut as mainstream media would have us believe. This begs the question: if both sides are allegedly engaged in terrorism, what makes us support one terrorist and condemn another?
When the US or its allies commit terrorism it places us in an uncomfortable position. We have two options. Either we admit the inadequacy of “terrorism” as a moral justification for war, or insist that what we do is not real terrorism. The latter is less confronting even if it requires some contorting on our part. The former comes with an underlying question that is much harder to ask ourselves: is “terrorism”, as we know it, a lie? After all, how can we identify with something we’ve spent all this energy orienting ourselves against? Terrorism provides a black hole for us to form our moral backbone around. Out of this skeleton springs all that we do stand for – democracy, freedom of speech, civil rights, meritocracy, free markets… things that are antithetical to terrorism.
In the West, the concept of terrorism already casts a long, familiar shadow in our psyche. In the wake of 9/11, when George W. Bush declared war on Iraq, the “war on terror” has been baked into our story of self, solidified as the West’s prerogative. Terrorism is an effective other-izing label because it describes the incomprehensible evil inherent in attacks that cause indiscriminate destruction. The global community doesn’t decide who gets the label. According to the OHCHR no standardized definition of terrorism exists and “national definitions of terrorism remain largely left to the discretion of States.” In other words, it depends on who you ask.
In our collective consciousness, terrorism has been associated with a kind of senseless violence perpetrated by the other, and long used as justification for wars waged by the U.S. and its allies against this “other”. The term was effectively wielded in Bush’s address to Congress and the American people on September 20th, 2001 – in which the terrorists are described as a fringe movement, a “perversion” of Islam, whose goal is to “remake the world” and, in the process of doing so, will “sacrifice human life to serve their radical visions.” The term perversion is apt in amplifying our fear of terrorists because of its demarcation. We aren’t able to relate to terrorists. We are relieved of the burden of understanding because we aren’t supposed to understand it. Terrorism is characterized by insanity, as some foreign evil that goes against the very nature of what it means to be human. What kind of person perpetrates a suicide-bombing attack? Certainly no person like us. For if we understand anything it’s the drive of the individual to self-serve and self-perpetuate. Terrorism’s flagrant disregard for the sanctity of human life – even one’s own life – is proof that this is not of a nature, human or otherwise, that we have anything in common with.
That’s why differentiation matters. It allows us to know that we’re different – even if we might occasionally do things that look similar to the actions of the terrorists characterized in Bush’s speech. Real terrorists can put you in jail “for owning a television” or for having a beard that isn’t long enough. We’d never do that!
The ”enemy” wasn’t always so conceptual. Our narratives around war have changed since the olden days. War implies armed conflict between groups that have some kind of parity, but that isn’t as applicable in light of US global hegemony – a relatively recent development. From the ashes of World War II emerged the US as a global superpower and supreme leader of the Free World. The fall of the Soviet Union then cemented the US’s military, economic, and cultural dominance so that by the dawn of the 21st century it was essentially politically unrivaled. With military might skewed so dramatically in favor of the US it follows that our understanding of why war is waged has shifted. War is no longer viewed simply as a conflict between states but, increasingly, as a fight against the more nebulous threat of terrorism.
Questioning the terrorism narrative opens up a Pandora’s box of questions about US wars. If the qualifying factor that differentiates the terrorist from the “freedom-fighter” isn’t the definition of terrorism, what is it? The causes it serves? Values like democracy, or freedom, or civil rights? If we consider those values sacred enough to kill and die for, then they should be important enough to examine closely. One only has to take a cursory look under the hood of the first on the list – democracy; and see the long row of US-backed coup d’etats in Latin America – to realize the values we claim to fight for are not the full picture. We need to keep looking, even if we don’t like what we find. We have to keep looking, because, when it comes to something like war, the truth has got to matter. And if it doesn’t, then what are we fighting for?
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Ting Huang is the Communications Director at Massachusetts Peace Action.
