Most revolutions began as guerrilla terrorism.
The American Revolution started out as terrorist acts against England. The
"Boston Tea Party" is a prime example of terrorism. Colonial
revolutionaries sneaked aboard an English Tea Merchant Ships, where they threw
thousands of dollars worth of tea into the Atlantic Ocean. Americans today think
of that incident as a stride to freedom, but the English look at it as the
beginning of countless terrorist acts.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground
in Palestine was described as "TERRORIST." By 1942, the Holocaust was
occurring, and liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the
Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists,
suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as "freedom fighters". You
can find in some old books and posters pictures of Israeli Prime Ministers, like
Menachem Begin, labeled as "Terrorists" - Reward 100,000 British
pounds!
From 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine
Liberation Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist
organization. Yasir Arafat was described repeatedly by the great sage of
American journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the "Chief of
Terrorism."
In September 29, 1998, it was rather amusing to
see a picture of Yasir Arafat to the right of President Bill Clinton. To his
left is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just a few years earlier
Yasir Arfat used to appear with this very menacing look and a gun appearing from
his belt. I am sure you remember those pictures.
And do you remember the picture of President
Reagan, in 1985 receiving a group of bearded men. These were very
ferocious-looking men with turbans and flowing garments looking like they came
from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After
receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, and said,
"These are the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". These
were the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the
Evil Soviet Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!
Ads by Google:
Advertisements not controlled by IslamiCity
|
Up until this time the old adage, "One
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" was still valid. But now
there is no such thing as a freedom fighter whether it is the oppressed fighting
for liberty in Chechnya, Kashmir or Palestine. Every freedom fighter has been
reduced to a "Dirty Rotten TERRORIST".
In August 1998, another American President
ordered missile strikes from the American navy based in the Indian Ocean to kill
Osama Bin Laden and his men in the camps in Afghanistan.
And yet again another President of the United
States, in November 2001 launched a devastating campaign to 'Smoke these men
from their caves'.
The embarrassing reminder is that Mr. Bin
Laden, the great 'Satan of the East', was only a few years ago the moral
equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! Now of course Mr. Bin
Laden is very angry over the fact that he has been demoted from the moral equivalent
of the 'Founding Fathers' to the moral equivalent of Raspoutine.
|
The reason to recall these stories is to point
out that the matter of terrorism is rather complicated. Terrorists change. The
terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes
the terrorist of today. This is a serious matter of the constantly changing
world of images in which we have to keep our heads straight to know what is
terrorism and what is not. But more importantly, to know
what causes it, and how to STOP it.
|
Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight
of good, see it! - And anyone who has done an atom's
weight of evil, shall see it. Quran 99: 7 - 8
Adapted from Terrorism:
Theirs and Ours
by Eqbal Ahmad
