{"id":45559,"date":"2014-08-04T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=45559"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:47","slug":"terrorism-in-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/08\/terrorism-in-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrorism in the Israeli Attack on Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve written<\/a> many<\/a> times<\/a> before<\/a>, \u201cterrorism\u201d is, and from the start was designed to be<\/a>, almost entirely devoid of discernible meaning. It\u2019s a fear-mongering slogan, lacking any consistent application, intended to end rational debate and justify virtually any conduct by those who apply the term. But to the extent it means anything beyond that, it typically refers to the killing of civilians as a means of furthering political or military goals.<\/p>\n

Below are two charts reflecting the deaths of civilians, soldiers and \u201cmilitants\u201d in both Gaza and Israel since the July 8 Israeli attack began. The statistics used are unduly generous toward Israel, since \u201cmilitants\u201d in Gaza are often nothing more than residents who take up arms to defend their homes against an invading and occupying army. Even with that generous interpretation, these numbers, standing alone, tell a powerful story:<\/p>\n

\"graph-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"graph-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you landed on earth from another planet this week, knowing nothing other than the most common use of the word \u201cterrorism,\u201d which side do you think would most frequently be referred to as \u201cterrorists\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Often, the most vivid illustration of the criminality of this attack comes not from data but from isolated stories. Yesterday, for instance<\/a>, \u201cin Khan Younis, five members of the Najjar family, which lost 21 people in a previous strike, were killed.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cin the Al Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, an airstrike from an F-16 killed the mayor, Anis Abu Shamala, and four others in his home, some of whom had taken refuge there from intense artillery shelling nearby.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Israeli government\u2019s messaging machine quickly switched from hyping rocket attacks, which were causing relatively little damage, to featuring what it began calling \u201cterror tunnels\u201d. The U.S. media dutifully followed suit<\/a>, with CNN anchor (and former AIPAC employee) Wolf Blitzer touring a \u201cterror tunnel\u201d led around by the IDF and his flashlight<\/a>, while the New York Times\u2019 Jodi Rudoren did the same in an article headlined<\/a> \u201cTunnels Lead Right to the Heart of Israeli Fear,\u201d quoting \u201cIsraeli military officials\u201d, \u201can Israeli military spokesman\u201d, and \u201cIsraeli experts\u201d. But a separate article in the NYT<\/a> highlighted how these \u201cterror tunnels\u201d are actually used:<\/p>\n

The strikes during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr came after the latest humanitarian halt to hostilities was punctured by attacks on both sides, culminating in the most deadly incursion yet by Palestinian militants through an underground tunnel<\/strong> from Gaza into Israel.<\/p>\n

Colonel Lerner said Tuesday [29 Jul 2014] that between four and eight gunmen had burst from the tunnel near a military watchtower near the border and killed five soldiers<\/strong> in an adjacent building with antitank missiles.<\/p>\n

In American media discourse, when Palestinians overwhelmingly kill soldiers (95% of the Israeli death toll) who are part of an army that is blockading, occupying, invading, and indiscriminately bombing them and killing their children by the hundreds, that is \u201cterrorism\u201d; when Israelis use massive, brutal force against a trapped civilian population, overwhelmingly killing innocent men, women and children (at least 75% of the Palestinian death toll), with clear intentions to kill civilians (see point 3<\/a>), that is noble \u201cself-defense.\u201d That demonstrates how skewed U.S. discourse is in favor of Israel, as well as the purely manipulative, propagandistic nature of the term \u201cterrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, <\/em>No Place to Hide<\/em>, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn\u2019s column was featured at <\/em>Guardian US<\/em> and <\/em>Salon<\/em>. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the Gannett Foundation award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation watchdog journalism award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/em>Foreign Policy<\/em> magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He lives in Rio, Brazil.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/em>campaign<\/em><\/strong><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel.\u00a0\u00a0 DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve written many times before, \u201cterrorism\u201d is, and from the start was designed to be, almost entirely devoid of discernible meaning. It\u2019s a fear-mongering slogan, lacking any consistent application, intended to end rational debate and justify virtually any conduct by those who apply the term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}