A terrorist is generally seen as one who uses terror, or random attacks on civilians, to achieve political or military goals. While this definition would seem straightforward, there are exceptions. If the person attacking civilians is on our side, then that person is not a terrorist, especially if they attack civilians from military planes. However, if they're from some third-world Islamic backwater, they're clearly a terrorist and shouldn't be compared to decent Americans and Israelis bombing civilians from planes.
Questions that always come to mind are as follows: If someone's nation is militarily outclassed by the world's largest and wealthiest nation, why not use terror to strike at that which will otherwise surely crush you, thus nullifying your chances of achieving your objective? Also, if the wealthy nations are going to retaliate against civilians even in the case of military attack, as occurred in Iraq, why not first strike their civilians and increase the chances of their backing out?
Terrorism at its core is like any other political-psychological technique. The goal is to intimidate the enemy with uncertainty and potentially horrifying consequences, similar to the way the threats of nuclear war and superpower intervention are used against the unallied world. The question that is most relevant to Americans is, "How long will people put up with the name game of calling one side 'terrorists' and the others 'peacekeepers'?"
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Former Haganah officer, Col. Meir Pa'el, upon his retirement from the Israeli army in 1972, made the following public statement about Deir Yasin that was published by Yediot Ahronot (April 4, 1972): "In the exchange that followed four [Irgun] men were killed and a dozen were wounded ... by noon time the battle was over and the shooting had ceased. Although there was calm, the village had not yet surrendered. The Irgun and LEHI men came out of hiding and began to `clean' the houses. They shot whoever they saw, women and children included, the commanders did not try to stop the massacre .... I pleaded with the commander to order his men to cease fire, but to no avail. In the meantime, 25 Arabs had been loaded on a truck and driven through Mahne Yehuda and Zichron Yousef (like prisoners in a Roman `March of Triumph'). At the end of the drive, they were taken to the quarry between Deir Yasin and Giv'at Shaul, and murdered in cold blood ... The commanders also declined when asked to take their men and bury the 254 Arab bodies. This unpleasant task was performed by two Gadna units brought to the village from Jerusalem."
Zvi Ankori, who commanded the Haganah unit that occupied Deir Yasin after the massacre, gave this statement in 1982 about the massacre, published by Davar on April 9, 1982: "I went into 6 to 7 houses. I saw cut off genitalia and women's crushed stomaches. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder." * |