The word “terrorism” is applied selectively to enemies of the US and its allies, turning a legal and moral category into propaganda that obscures state violence and normalises genocide.
Allies of the US are never designated as “terrorist”.
Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” failed. Drugs are now more widely used around the world than ever before. Police forces disguise the failure by telling us about another record drug haul.
And George Bush’s “war on terror” has failed because continuing US attacks on Muslim people – as in Iran – inevitably triggers a response.
‘Terrorism’ has become a descriptor for organisations that annoy or antagonise the US and its allies. Or won’t do what they are told.
The word is used as propaganda rather than diagnosis. It has lost precise meaning with the description usually coming before the facts are established. Without much thought journalists use “terrorism” as an immediate descriptor for all sorts of public violence. Crime and terrorism are not the same thing.
But labels stick and are used as an insult to cast an aspersion or moral judgement on an opponent. What should be serious discussion on an important issue becomes a political bun fight.
Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation which allegedly killed 1000 Israeli civilians, although a UN Commission found that Israeli forces applied the “Hannibal directive” in several locations that day, killing at least 14 Israeli civilians. But the IDF has not been designated as a terrorist organisation despite having killed over 73,000 Palestinians. Hamas is defending Palestinian land seized and illegally occupied by Israel.
Palestinians have a right to oppose occupation, just as Australians would have had if there had been Japanese occupation in the last World War.
Netanyahu tells us endlessly about Hamas, an abominable “terrorist” organisation that is hiding behind every Palestinian hospital, school, journalist and aid worker. Yet he arranged several billion dollars to be paid to Hamas from 2018 to 2023. The money was supplied through Qatar in suitcases and by Israeli security forces.
The reason for the payment was to build Hamas as a rival to Fatah headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu said repeatedly that a peace deal with the Palestinians was impossible because there was no credible Palestinian organisation to negotiate with. So, he poured money into Hamas to weaken Fatah. To further cripple any Palestinian leadership, Israel in 2002 imprisoned the most popular Palestinian leader of all, Marwan Barghouti. His family and lawyers allege he has been tortured and abused.
Both Israel Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin were declared terrorists as Israel fought for the establishment of Israel. Begin went on to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The African National Congress was designated as a terrorist organisation. Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist list for 20 years and in prison for 27 years. He became President and was awarded a Nobel Prize. The Irish Republican Army was described as a terrorist organisation by the British government. But Gerry Adams the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, became a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Irish Parliament and a member of the British House of Commons, but never took his seat.
The terrorist of today often becomes the freedom fighter of tomorrow.
Organisations serving or aligned with western and Israeli interests have never been described as terrorist. This is even though Israeli conduct in Gaza has been found by the UN, human rights organisations and numerous others as committing genocide.
An ICC arrest warrant has been issued for Netanyahu for war crimes. Journalists, aid workers and civilians have been killed on scales that meet the definitional criteria of serious harm to persons for political ends. But Israel is not designated as a terrorist state.
Organisations like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard can be described as terrorists, but no western aligned military organisation has ever been assessed as meeting the same criteria.
The legacy media has no problem describing past genocides in Armenia, Rwanda and Srebrenica but is determined not to apply the term to Gaza.
Legacy media has promoted the selective application of terrorism to acts by Muslim perpetrators or Muslim associated organisations. This vagueness or confusion in the use of the word is not accidental. It is used because clarity would be damaging. The corruption of language and the corruption of thought is deliberate.
The Trump Administration also shows us how “terrorism” can be used as a domestic political weapon. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is framing Cuba as a decades-long sponsor of terrorism that helped create and cultivate the radical left in the United States. He is linking Cuba to the Democratic Socialists of America and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Most terrorism in the world is driven by Western violence inflicted on Muslim people. The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute has estimated the death toll in US-led wars on Muslim people is close to five million people. A further 38 million people have been displaced in post 9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. And more in Gaza.
Terrorism is the unfortunate response by people who have no adequate means of contesting the malign military might of the US and its supporters.
We have brought foreign conflicts and terrorism to Australia by abetting US-led or US-supported wars in Muslim countries. By failing to call out genocide in Gaza, large sections of our population are frustrated and angry. And rightly so. Our Prime Minister tells the opponents of genocide to “lower the temperature”. But the supporters of genocide earn no rebuke at all. Instead, they get encouragement while the three years of terror continue in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
The white man’s intelligence club, the Five Eyes, gives mendicant members like Australia a one-eyed view of terrorism. In an earlier article I pointed out that US intelligence agencies and particularly the CIA are estimated to provide over 90 per cent of Five Eyes input. With the close links between Mossad, MI6 and the CIA it means that the assessment of organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah are substantially informed by what the CIA tell us.
The CIA view on world affairs, from terrorism to China to AUKUS, is recycled through the Five Eyes to ASIO which in turn briefs our government. Our intelligence services are Americanised like so much else in Australia. This explains why in so many ways our government is misled.
Terrorism attracts our attention because it is deliberately designed to be as visible as possible – a street slaying by knife or shooting, a bombing in a street or theatre, or a bus careering amongst pedestrians. An object of terrorists is to make their act as vivid and as public as possible. They then claim credit for their action. By contrast, domestic violence which is a much more serious problem, is by its very nature behind closed doors.
Our legacy media is drawn into the terrorist’s game-plan. Public violence is news with pictures of carnage. In contrast there are seldom pictures of domestic violence that are anywhere near as “newsworthy.”
Terrorism is ideal for those who work to exploit our fear of the foreigner, the outsider and the person who is different. The fear promoted in Australia used to be about Asians and communists. Now it is about Muslims.
Industries have expanded to take advantage of the fear of terrorism – intelligence agencies, police, airport security, businesses, think-tanks and even universities. Anti-terrorism is an opportunity in so many ways for more money and more jobs.
“Terrorism” is deliberately used to confuse and mislead. In any honest judgement how could Hamas be a terrorist organisation but not the state-sponsored terrorism of the IDF?
As a result, genocide is normalised.
John Menadue is the Founder of Pearls and Irritations and a board member. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief. John was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.