On Terror and Justice
My father was always supportive of violent direct action to force Israeli capitulation and there is no doubt in my mind he was a fan of Wadie Haddad who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - External Operations (PFLP-EO) until his death in 1978.
My father was of the view that no peace can be made with the Zionist entity, although he never had a wish to throw anyone into the sea or witness any expulsion of Jews once Arabs retook Palestine. (In those days it was a realistic goal to aim for.) The aim of direct action has always been for Palestinians to use all means at their disposal to force Israelis to recognize that they would live in constant fear unless they recognized Palestinian's claim to the land and ultimately accept living amidst a majority Arab population, in a country with an Arab name and an Arab flag.
I have a sneaking suspicion that my name, Hani, a purely Arab name, was my father’s idea, no doubt because he enjoyed being called Abu Hani, which coincidentally was Haddad’s nom de guerre. Every time I watch a movie or documentary of the good-old-bad-old-days of aircraft hijackings, the storming of OPEC meetings, I get goose bumps. What happened to Palestinians, have they lost that revolutionary zeal?
It is clear that Israel does not wish to make peace, it wants to impose its terms for a peaceful settlement. I doubt many young, angry Palestinians out there will accept those terms, many will prefer to fight. But how will they fight and with what? With stones and sling shots against helicopters and armour? In that lies the dilemma of the weak, they have the desire and zeal to lift themselves up and rise above their weakness, but reality and gravity always kicks is and keeps them nailed to the ground.
Watching a French movie the other day about the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, it dawned on me how truly naïve and inexperienced the revolutionary fighters of the 70s were compared to today’s Al Qaeda. Of course the security forces’ response to terrorist attacks was similarly inadequate. Carlos, who worked tirelessly for Haddad and the Palestinian cause, epitomized the typical terrorist-celebrity in an age of bell-bottoms, bushy sideburns and oversized sun glasses!
Something attributed to Carlos on Wikipedia somehow rings true and makes a lot of sense: “Carlos, the Jackal, praises Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks and advocates Revolutionary Islam as a new, post-Communist answer to what he calls United States' `totalitarianism`, telling readers: ‘From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies.’”
Revolutionary Islam has picked up where Haddad and George Habash left off. While the leaders of the PFLP were Christian Palestinian lefties, today’s revolutionaries are Yemeni, Saudi, Pakistani and Egyptian Muslims more ruthless and more deadly. Terror is an effective weapon, the first nations to use carpet bombing against civilian targets as a tactic of war know this well.
So why should terror as a weapon of war be denied to the militarily underdeveloped countries and the countless insurgencies fighting for causes they deem righteous? After all, all war is murder. Who has the right to make war, does anyone, who can say? Here we enter into a philosophical debate on the morality of violent direct action to achieve a political end, thereby distinguishing fighters for a cause from criminals bent on mayhem for pleasure or profit. But today is simply having that debate even acceptable?
The militarily and economically powerful countries of the world acted decisively after September 11 to make it very clear to terrorists and their supporters that they risk isolation and annihilation if they continued to use terrorist tactics as a weapon of war and a means to achieve political ends. The death toll was so great, the fear so pervasive that any sympathy for a cause was lost, fear became the prime motivator that pushed people to demand a war on terror. In many ways the terrorists' main weapon, fear, backfired.
Some insurgent movements may determine that targeting civilians in enemy population centres is the cheapest and easiest way to carry the war to the enemy, to create such fear and inconvenience that the people pressure their government to give in to the insurgents' demands. That nearly never works.
The fact is there is only one rule of war: power and might win in the end. Ultimately, if enough money and state resources are brought to bear, intelligence gathering will improve and insurgents will be identified, tracked down and killed and revolutions will end even before they begin.
It’s a different ball game these days than when the Soviet Union was still around. Before 1991, the Soviets could fund and support insurgents around the world and the US would have to be very careful in confronting Soviet-backed insurgent threats directly outside its sphere of influence.
Its ironic that the US today finds itself in very much the same situation the Soviet Union was in before its collapse: over extended militarily, in economic shambles and loosing a war against insurgents in Afghanistan.
One day enough injustices will be piled one on top of another to make the angry response of the masses to these injustices inevitable. Then no amount of money or power will crush revolutionary insurgents backed by the majority of their people.
Sadly, I have little hope of that ever happening in Arab countries because so many of the urban middle classes who would ideally lead such a movement are too selfish and callow and too focused on their own pleasures. In many ways we are perfect sheep, the pride and joy of our leaders who whipped us into submission.
My father was of the view that no peace can be made with the Zionist entity, although he never had a wish to throw anyone into the sea or witness any expulsion of Jews once Arabs retook Palestine. (In those days it was a realistic goal to aim for.) The aim of direct action has always been for Palestinians to use all means at their disposal to force Israelis to recognize that they would live in constant fear unless they recognized Palestinian's claim to the land and ultimately accept living amidst a majority Arab population, in a country with an Arab name and an Arab flag.
I have a sneaking suspicion that my name, Hani, a purely Arab name, was my father’s idea, no doubt because he enjoyed being called Abu Hani, which coincidentally was Haddad’s nom de guerre. Every time I watch a movie or documentary of the good-old-bad-old-days of aircraft hijackings, the storming of OPEC meetings, I get goose bumps. What happened to Palestinians, have they lost that revolutionary zeal?
It is clear that Israel does not wish to make peace, it wants to impose its terms for a peaceful settlement. I doubt many young, angry Palestinians out there will accept those terms, many will prefer to fight. But how will they fight and with what? With stones and sling shots against helicopters and armour? In that lies the dilemma of the weak, they have the desire and zeal to lift themselves up and rise above their weakness, but reality and gravity always kicks is and keeps them nailed to the ground.
Watching a French movie the other day about the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, it dawned on me how truly naïve and inexperienced the revolutionary fighters of the 70s were compared to today’s Al Qaeda. Of course the security forces’ response to terrorist attacks was similarly inadequate. Carlos, who worked tirelessly for Haddad and the Palestinian cause, epitomized the typical terrorist-celebrity in an age of bell-bottoms, bushy sideburns and oversized sun glasses!
Something attributed to Carlos on Wikipedia somehow rings true and makes a lot of sense: “Carlos, the Jackal, praises Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks and advocates Revolutionary Islam as a new, post-Communist answer to what he calls United States' `totalitarianism`, telling readers: ‘From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies.’”
Revolutionary Islam has picked up where Haddad and George Habash left off. While the leaders of the PFLP were Christian Palestinian lefties, today’s revolutionaries are Yemeni, Saudi, Pakistani and Egyptian Muslims more ruthless and more deadly. Terror is an effective weapon, the first nations to use carpet bombing against civilian targets as a tactic of war know this well. So why should terror as a weapon of war be denied to the militarily underdeveloped countries and the countless insurgencies fighting for causes they deem righteous? After all, all war is murder. Who has the right to make war, does anyone, who can say? Here we enter into a philosophical debate on the morality of violent direct action to achieve a political end, thereby distinguishing fighters for a cause from criminals bent on mayhem for pleasure or profit. But today is simply having that debate even acceptable?
The militarily and economically powerful countries of the world acted decisively after September 11 to make it very clear to terrorists and their supporters that they risk isolation and annihilation if they continued to use terrorist tactics as a weapon of war and a means to achieve political ends. The death toll was so great, the fear so pervasive that any sympathy for a cause was lost, fear became the prime motivator that pushed people to demand a war on terror. In many ways the terrorists' main weapon, fear, backfired.
Some insurgent movements may determine that targeting civilians in enemy population centres is the cheapest and easiest way to carry the war to the enemy, to create such fear and inconvenience that the people pressure their government to give in to the insurgents' demands. That nearly never works.
The fact is there is only one rule of war: power and might win in the end. Ultimately, if enough money and state resources are brought to bear, intelligence gathering will improve and insurgents will be identified, tracked down and killed and revolutions will end even before they begin.
It’s a different ball game these days than when the Soviet Union was still around. Before 1991, the Soviets could fund and support insurgents around the world and the US would have to be very careful in confronting Soviet-backed insurgent threats directly outside its sphere of influence.
Its ironic that the US today finds itself in very much the same situation the Soviet Union was in before its collapse: over extended militarily, in economic shambles and loosing a war against insurgents in Afghanistan.
One day enough injustices will be piled one on top of another to make the angry response of the masses to these injustices inevitable. Then no amount of money or power will crush revolutionary insurgents backed by the majority of their people.
Sadly, I have little hope of that ever happening in Arab countries because so many of the urban middle classes who would ideally lead such a movement are too selfish and callow and too focused on their own pleasures. In many ways we are perfect sheep, the pride and joy of our leaders who whipped us into submission.
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