Essays - Terrorism or National Liberation?

Terrorism or National Liberation?

A rather widespread attempt to make all definitions of terrorism meaningless is to lump together terrorist activities and the struggle to achieve national liberation. Thus, for instance, the recurrently stated Syrian official position is that Syria does not assist terrorist organizations; rather, it supports national liberation movements. President Hafez el-Assad, in a November 1986 speech to the participants in the 21st Convention of Workers Unions in Syria, said the following:

We have always opposed terrorism. But terrorism is one thing and a national struggle against occupation is another. We are against terrorism… Nevertheless, we support the struggle against occupation waged by national liberation movements.[5]

The attempt to confound the concepts of “terrorism” and “national liberation” comes to the fore in various official pronouncements from the Arab world. For instance, the fifth Islamic summit meeting in Kuwait, at the beginning of 1987, stated in its resolutions that:

The conference reiterates its absolute faith in the need to distinguish the brutal and unlawful terrorist activities perpetrated by individuals, by groups, or by states, from the legitimate struggle of oppressed and subjugated nations against foreign occupation of any kind. This struggle is sanctioned by heavenly law, by human values, and by international conventions.[6]

The foreign and interior ministers of the Arab League reiterated this position at their April 1998 meeting in Cairo. In a document entitled “Arab Strategy in the Struggle against Terrorism,” they emphasized that belligerent activities aimed at “liberation and self determination” are not in the category of terrorism, whereas hostile activities against regimes or families of rulers will not be considered political attacks but rather criminal assaults.[7] Here again we notice an attempt to justify the “means” (terrorism) in terms of the “end” (national liberation). Regardless of the nature of the operation, when we speak of “liberation from the yoke of a foreign occupation” this will not be terrorism but a legitimate and justified activity. This is the source of the cliché, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” which stresses that all depends on the perspective and the worldview of the one doing the defining. The former President of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, made the following statement in April 1981, during the visit of the Libyan ruler, Muamar Qadhafi: “Imperialists have no regard either for the will of the people or the laws of history. Liberation struggles cause their indignation. They describe them as ‘terrorism’.”[8]

Surprisingly, many in the Western world have accepted the mistaken assumption that terrorism and national liberation are two extremes in the scale of legitimate use of violence. The struggle for “national liberation” would appear to be the positive and justified end of this sequence, whereas terrorism is the negative and odious one. It is impossible, according to this approach, for any organization to be both a terrorist group and a movement for national liberation at the same time.

In failing to understand the difference between these two concepts, many have, in effect, been caught in a semantic trap laid by the terrorist organizations and their allies. They have attempted to contend with the clichés of national liberation by resorting to odd arguments, instead of stating that when a group or organization chooses terrorism as a means, the aim of their struggle cannot be used to justify their actions (see below). Thus, for instance, Senator Jackson was quoted in Benyamin Netanyahu’s book Terrorism: How the West Can Win as saying,

The idea that one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another’s ‘freedom fighter’ cannot be sanctioned. Freedom fighters or revolutionaries don’t blow up buses containing non-combatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters don’t set out to capture and slaughter schoolchildren; terrorist murderers do . . . It is a disgrace that democracies would allow the treasured word ‘freedom’ to be associated with acts of terrorists.[9]

Professor Benzion Netanyahu also assumed, a priori, that freedom fighters are incapable of perpetrating terrorist acts:

For in contrast to the terrorist, no freedom fighter has ever deliberately attacked innocents. He has never deliberately killed small children, or passersby in the street, or foreign visitors, or other civilians who happen to reside in the area of conflict or are merely associated ethnically or religiously with the people of that area… The conclusion we must draw from all this is evident. Far from being a bearer of freedom, the terrorist is the carrier of oppression and enslavement . . .[10]

This approach strengthens the attempt by terrorist organizations to present terrorism and the struggle for liberation as two contradictory concepts. It thus plays into the terrorists’ hands by supporting their claim that, since they are struggling to remove someone they consider a foreign occupier, they cannot be considered terrorists.

The claim that a freedom fighter cannot be involved in terrorism, murder and indiscriminate killing is, of course, groundless. A terrorist organization can also be a movement of national liberation, and the concepts of “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” are not mutually contradictory.

Targeting “the innocent”?

Not only terrorists and their allies use the definition of terrorism to promote their own goals and needs. Politicians in countries affected by terrorism at times make political use of the definition of terrorism by attempting to emphasize its brutality. One of the prevalent ways of illustrating the cruelty and inhumanity of terrorists is to present them as harming “the innocent.” Thus, in Terrorism: How the West Can Win, Binyamin Netanyahu states that terrorism is “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.”[11]

This definition was changed in Netanyahu’s third book, Fighting Terrorism, when the phrase “the innocent” was replaced by the term “civilians”: “Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic assault on civilians to inspire fear for political ends.”[12] “Innocent” (as opposed to “civilian”) is a subjective concept, influenced by the definer’s viewpoint, and therefore must not be the basis for a definition of terrorism. The use of the concept “innocent” in defining terrorism makes the definition meaningless and turns it into a tool in the political game. The dilemma entailed by the use of the term “innocent” is amply illustrated in the following statement by Abu Iyad:

As much as we repudiate any activity that endangers innocent lives, that is, against civilians in countries that are not directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we feel no remorse concerning attacks against Israeli military and political elements who wage war against the Palestinian people . . . Israeli acts of vengeance usually result in high casualties among Palestinian civilians—particularly when the Israeli Air Force blindly and savagely bombs refugee camps—and it is only natural that we should respond in appropriate ways to deter the enemy from continuing its slaughter of innocent victims.”[13]

Abu Iyad here clarifies that innocent victims are civilians in countries that are not directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict (implying that civilians in Israel, even children and old people, are not innocent), while he describes Palestinian civilians as innocent victims.