11/03/2024
The story of Israeli lawfare against Palestinians begins with the concept of terrorism. Prior to the 1970s, terrorism—a fraught term that at its core describes politically motivated violence aimed at coercing a government or population—was infrequently used. Indeed, it was far more common for events we now associate with terrorism—like hijackings and bombings—to be described as forms of “insurgency” than “terrorism.” These insurgencies were understood as driven by concrete and understandable grievances rather than by evil or immoral intentions. For instance, mid-twentieth century analysis of violent revolutionary movements—occurring in places as wide-ranging as Vietnam, Kenya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland—typically framed those formations as engaged in strategic opposition to a ruling regime motivated by causes like colonialism and racism.
When analysts did use the terms “terror” or “terrorism,” they carried no moral valence and did not serve as markers of despicable or morally impermissible behavior. Instead, as international relations scholar Lisa Stampnitzky explains in Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism’ (2013), terrorism was typically used to denote “but one stage in a broader process of insurgency or revolution—a stage through which groups could pass without permanently tainting their reputations.” Because terrorism was viewed as a strategy or tactic, analysts applied it to both state and nonstate actors alike. For example, as late as the mid-1970s, “terrorism” was used to describe the actions of nonstate groups, like the pro-Palestinian Black September organization, as well as the acts of countries—like Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands......
In the late 1970s, as terrorism began to be used more frequently in U.S. discourse, its meaning also began to shift. For the first time, terrorism became a moral framework used by U.S. officials to condemn and delegitimize enemies of the state. Over the next decade, any tactical import was shorn from terrorism’s meaning and it became synonymous, instead, with the most evil and immoral acts perpetrated, primarily, by Arabs and Muslims.
The Israeli government had long used these same arguments to try and smear the Palestinian movement for self-determination and the Arab governments that supported it. In the words of Edward Said, Israeli efforts to try and equate terrorism with Palestinians emanated from Israel’s understanding that “no conventional military option existed against the Palestinians. . . . and that therefore they would have to be done away with through other means.” Those “other means” required discrediting and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance, in all its forms. As Said described it, by the end of the 1970s, Israel had learned how to “co-opt U.S. policy, cynically [exploit] Jewish fears of another Holocaust and [stir] up latent Judeo-Christian sentiments against Islam” to turn the U.S. political machine into another weapon in the battle against Palestinian self-determination. “Terrorism” provided the conceptual hook for that project. The Netanyahus’ 1979 terrorism conference, as well as a follow-up conference in 1984 and a book written by Benjamin Netanyahu titled Terrorism: How the West Can Win (reportedly President Ronald Reagan’s favorite book), played a major role in helping these views take hold...
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/instruments-of-dehumanization/ #:~:text=As%20Said%20described%20it%2C%20by,conceptual%20hook%20for%20that%20project.
