May 29, 2024
By Stephen Gowans
Last October, Talk TV host Piers Morgan hectored Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, demanding to know whether Zomlot considered Hamas a terrorist organization. Zomlot countered by asking Morgan whether he thought Israel is a terrorist organization. Neither would answer the other.
Morgan's show is a forum for entertainment, not insight, enlightenment, or rational debate. But if questions could be debated rationally on his show, how might the question of whether Hamas is a terrorist organization be answered?
The first thing we need to do is define our term. What is terrorism? In his exchange with Morgan, Homlot made a promising start by offering a definition: Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence against civilians for the sake of a political agenda.
There are many definitions of terrorism, but most feature the three elements Homlot included in his definition: (1) the actual or threatened use of violence, (2) against civilians, (3) in the pursuit of a political goal.
Terrorism, then, is a form of violent conduct, action, or behavior, aimed at civilians, with a political dimension. It is not a characteristic of an individual, group, or state. There are no definitions of a terrorist, terrorist organization, or terrorist state apart from definitions of what terrorist conduct is.
Obviously, it could be said that an organization that uses violence against civilians in pursuit of a political aim is a terrorist organization, but this is problematic. It is fairly certain that every person, organization, or state that has used violence against civilians to further a political agenda, has also used non-terrorist methods.
An organization might seek to achieve its political objectives by lobbying, appeal to the courts, boycotts, strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, participation in elections, or through armed conflict against enemy combatants.
So, if an organization does any of these non-terrorist things, and at the same time, engages in acts of terrorism, is it a terrorist organization or a non-terrorist one?
If we call it a terrorist organization because it has engaged in terrorist conduct then by the same reasoning, we must also call it a non-terrorist organization because it has engaged in non-terrorist conduct. The problem here is one of insisting on assignment to only one of two categories that are not mutually exclusive.
Few, if any, organizations with military branches have completely avoided or will in the future completely avoid the threatened or actual use of violence against civilians to further their aims. This means that these organizations are simultaneously terrorist organizations and not terrorist organizations. Trying to force people, organizations, and states into the Procrustean bed of one of two categories that are not mutually exclusive, misrepresents the world as it is.
We are encouraged to assign the United States to the category of non-terrorist state. And while it does engage in non-terrorist conduct in pursuit of its political goals, it also acts in terrorist ways.
To see this, consider Richard Grenell, a man burning with the ambition to be the next US secretary of state. Grenell worked for former president Donald Trump as his ambassador to Germany, acting national intelligence chief, and special envoy to the Balkans. Here he is explaining how he would handle negotiations with foreign states. Grenell says he would tell his interlocuters:
"Guys, if we don't solve this here, if we don't represent peace and figure out a tough way, I've got to take this file, go back to the United States and transfer it to the secretary of defense, who doesn't negotiate. He's going to bomb you."
Since US bombing inevitably produces civilian casualties, Grenell's proposal to use the threat of violence against civilians, and, if necessary, to use actual violence, is terrorism. What he proposes to do is use terrorism as his main method of statecraft.
But Grenell would only be carrying on a US tradition. The United States is history's greatest practitioner of terror bombing—the raining of high explosive and incendiary munitions upon civilians and civilian targets to terrorize enemy populations. These campaigns of terrorism have produced massive civilian casualties, a point made recently by former US chairman of the joint chiefs Mark Milley. "Before we all get self-righteous about what Israel is doing," intoned Milley, we should remember that "we slaughtered people in massive numbers, innocent people…men, women, and children."
US and Israeli generals say their use of violence against civilians in pursuit of state aims (that is political agendas) is not terrorism, claiming that they don't deliberately target civilians. This is beside the point. Whether civilians are targeted or not, they are still exposed to massive violence even when they're not targeted—slaughtered in massive numbers, innocent people, men, women, and children, as Milley reminds us.
Even if the violence to which civilians are exposed is incidental to the targeting of military objectives, it is still the inevitable and predictable consequence of the pursuit of these objectives—and hence represents terrorism.
In its campaign in Gaza, it is clear that Israel has exposed civilians to horrors beyond comprehension in the pursuit of military aims and a larger political agenda. There is no question that this is terrorism.
Has Hamas also undertaken terrorist acts? It appears so. But the violence it has inflicted on Israeli civilians is not on a scale that even remotely rises to the level of the violence Israel has visited upon Palestinian civilians.
Israel has killed or wounded almost 120,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. Let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that only women and children are civilians. They are estimated to make up 60 percent of Palestinian casualties. Israel has, then, used violence to harm 72,000 civilians (and likely more since many uncounted bodies are believed to remain buried beneath the rubble.)
Let us assume further that all of the roughly 1,200 people who were killed by Palestinian fighters on October 7 were civilians, and that all were targeted by Hamas. This isn't true, but for the sake of simplicity, let's assume it is.
Taking these simplifying assumptions into account (all of which favor Israel), the level of Israeli terrorist violence against Palestinian civilians since October 7 has been at least 60 times greater than the level of Hamas terrorist violence against Israeli civilians.
The level of Israeli terrorism thus greatly overshadows that of Hamas, and yet Israel and its backers would have us believe that the terrorist conduct of Hamas is heinous while the far greater terrorist conduct of Israel is not terrorism at all, but the just exercise of a state's right to defend itself.
Does Hamas's terrorism justify Israel's terroristic response? Piers Morgan has tried to excuse Israel's terrorism by pointing to US, British, and Canadian terror bombings in World War II, arguing that these responses were necessary to defeat a great evil (and therefore by implication that Israel's greater terrorism is necessary to eliminate Hamas's far lesser terrorism.) But the same argument can be used to justify Hamas's terrorism. It too could be said that Hamas must use violence against civilians in order to defeat the evil of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.
In this case, whether terrorism is seen to be legitimate or not depends on which evil you support and which you oppose, that is, whose side you're on—that of the oppressor or the oppressed?
So, has Hamas committed terrorist acts? Yes. But it's doubtful that any organization with an active military branch, including most states, hasn't done the same. States have carried out far more acts of terrorism with far deadlier consequences than Hamas—a small, weak, lightly armed non-state organization—has or ever will.
My aim in pointing this out is not to mount a tu quoque (yeah, but what about?) defense of Hamas's use of violence against civilians, but to show that the understanding of the organization as a bloodthirsty outlier—which people who call Hamas a terrorist organization would like to instil in the public mind—is false. It is has acted in far less violent ways toward civilians than the Palestinians' oppressors have. This is explainable in part by the fact that Hamas lacks the means to mount massive campaigns of violence, while Israel—supplied by the United States, including with 2,000 lb. bombs, which, when used in the dense urban setting of Gaza, knowingly massacre civilians in large numbers —is able to inflict cruel horrors without end on Palestinian civilians—horrors rising to the level of genocide.
A final question: Is Israel's use of violence against Hamas fighters legitimate? The answer depends on what kind of conflict you think this is—a war of two states, in which contending ruling classes vie for advantage, or a conflict of oppressed against oppressor? There's no question that this is a conflict of the latter type, that the Palestinians are oppressed by the Israelis, and that Hamas is fighting to overcome the oppression of its members and compatriots. Unless you think the violence of the slave master to crush the rebellion of the slave is legitimate, Israel's use of violence against Hamas fighters has no sort of moral sanction at all.
The only legitimate response Israel has to the October 7 revolt is to end its oppression of Palestinians, to de-Zionize itself, and to accept a non-national, democratic political arrangement from the River to the Sea, in which all people—native Arabs (including returned refugees) and settler Jews—live together as equals.
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