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.