Editor's Note: We believe that the killing of innocent people is wrong,
in all cases. Thus, we cannot condone the use of terrorism by some extreme
Palestinian groups, especially prevalent during the 1970s. That being said,
however, it is necessary to examine the context in which such incidents occurred.
We hear lots about Palestinian
terrorism. How about the Israeli record?
"The record of Israeli terrorism
goes back to the origins of the state—indeed, long before—including
the massacre of 250 civilians and brutal expulsion of seventy
thousand others from Lydda and Ramle in July 1948; the massacre
of hundreds of others at the undefended village of Doueimah near
Hebron in October 1948;...the slaughters in Quibya, Kafr Kassem,
and a string of other assassinated villages; the expulsion of
thousands of Bedouins from the demilitarized zones shortly after
the 1948 war and thousands more from northeastern Sinai in the
early 1970's, their villages destroyed, to open the region for
Jewish settlement; and on, and on." Noam
Chomsky, "Blaming The Victims," ed. Said and Hitchens.
Terrorism - continued
"However much one laments
and even wishes somehow to atone for the loss of life and suffering
visited upon innocents because of Palestinian violence, there
is still the need, I think, also to say that no national movement
has been so unfairly penalized, defamed, and subjected to disproportionate
retaliation for its sins as has the Palestinian.
The Israeli policy of punitive
counterattacks (or state terrorism) seems to be to try to kill
anywhere from 50 to 100 Arabs for every Jewish fatality. The
devastation of Lebanese refugee camps, hospitals, schools,
mosques, churches, and orphanages; the summary arrests, deportations,
house destructions, maimings, and torture of Palestinians on
the West Bank and Gaza...these, and the number of Palestinian
fatalities, the scale of material loss, the physical, political
and psychological deprivations, have tremendously exceeded
the damage done by Palestinians to Israelis." Edward
Said, "The Question of Palestine."
The U.S. Government and media
bias on terrorism in the Middle East
"It is simply extraordinary
and without precedent that Israel's history, its record—from
the fact that it...is a state built on conquest, that it has
invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will,
to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and
Palestinian territory against international law—is simply
never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media
or in official discourse...never addressed as playing any role
at all in provoking 'Islamic terror.'" Edward Said
in "The Progressive." May 30, 1996.
