Defending terrorism
By Steven Martinovich
web
posted April 8, 2002
To the average person, defining the concept of terrorism wouldn't cause
great difficulty. In just a few seconds I managed to come up with "terrorism
is the systemic use of violence, generally against civilians, in order
to intimidate or coerce a society or state, usually for political or ideological
reasons." Granted, such a simple definition inevitably fails to address
the gray areas that students of ethics and morality love to play in but
it is leagues better than the 57 nations - which included alleged sponsors
of terrorism like Iran, Iraq and Syria - of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference managed to do at their meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last
week.
After two days of debate, the OIC's draft declaration was accepted without
change. The definition? There was none. Few of the states were able to
agree on a definition so delegates decided that no attempt should be made.
What gave the delegates difficulty was Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad's call to define terrorism as any attack on civilians, similar
to the definition above. While Mohamad acknowledged that some terrorists
had legitimate grievances, attacks that targeted civilians "could
not be justified "irrespective of the nobility of the struggle."

A press photographer pictures the damage to the
Hotel Park in Netamanya on March 28. A Palestinian suicide bomber
blew himself up in the hotel in the Israeli coastal resort town of
Netanya on March 27, killing 19 people and wounding around 140 |
That placed the delegates at the conference in a tough spot. While they
were fruitlessly working towards a definition, Palestinian suicide bombers
worked feverishly to kill as many Israelis as possible during the Passover
holiday. If the delegates accepted Mohamad's definition of terrorism,
they would effectively renounce the Palestinians.
The end result of all the maneuvering was a declaration which rejected
"any attempts to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian
people" to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.
"We reject any attempt to associate Islamic states or Palestinian
and Lebanese resistance with terrorism," the draft said. Instead,
the roots of terrorism, which included "foreign occupation, injustice
and exclusion," should be addressed.
Along with supporting the recent Saudi peace proposal which demanded Israel
give up land it captured during a 1967 war instigated by Arab nations
before peace talks could begin, the declaration also called for a 13-nation
committee to work under United Nations auspices to "work toward an
internationally agreed definition of terrorism" and "formulate
a joint organized response of the international community to terrorism
in all its forms and manifestation." Given the success of the United
Nations in solving the problems of the Middle East over the past half
century and its continued antagonism to Israel, one can only wonder what
the by product of that committee would be.
The members of the OIC are right when they argue it's wrong to link Islam
and Muslims with terrorism. They are wrong, however, by refusing to approve
a definition of terrorism that would excoriate Palestinian Authority chairman
Yasser Arafat and the terrorists he and his aides are accused of supporting.

Palestinian Abdel Baset Odeh, a Hamas activist,
holding a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, and a automatic rifle.
Odeh, 25, was the suicide bomber that blew himself up in Netanya |
The terrorist attacks of the last 18 months, ones that saw more Israelis
killed than the preceding few decades combined, have finally revealed
that the Palestinian's and Arafat's desire for peace never really existed.
Not long ago Arafat was essentially offered what he's always wanted, a
Palestinian nation, but turned it down to pursue a goal he's desired for
30 years: the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Since 1948, its Arab neighbours have attacked Israel three times, and
all three times the tiny state beat back those attacks. Those military
failures taught Israel's opponents that traditional military attacks won't
drive the Jews into the sea but terrorism might. Their gamble is that
repeated attacks against civilians will eventually be too much for Israelis
to bear economically, philosophically and politically. They might be right.
For the first time since the creation of a Jewish state, many Jews are
opting to leave that country in the belief that it has no future.
By refusing to condemn that tactic by declaring the actions of Palestinian
suicide bombers to be terrorism, the members of the OIC have defined their
own position. They had polite words in the wake of September 11 for the
victims of terrorism, but when push comes to shove they will refuse to
declare that the actions of Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli military
are not morally equivalent. By refusing to announce that no cause justifies
the willful murder of innocent civilians, the OIC member states practiced
the worst kind of moral relativism. 
Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario. This
piece originally appeared in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and WorldNetDaily
on April 4.

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