#remi_brulin

Evolution and Debates about the Concept of Terrorism
By #Remi_Brulin
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/20574/evolution-and-debates-about-the-concept-of-terrori

The Unresolved Issue of State Terrorism

On 4 October 1985, by a vote of fourteen yeses and with the United States abstaining, the Security Council adopted Resolution 573, which “condemned vigorously the act of armed aggression perpetrated by Israel against Tunisian territory.” That time, Washington did not use its veto but, as Vernon Walters explained, it continued to “recognize and strongly supported the principle that a State subjected to continuing terrorist attacks may respond with appropriate use of force to defend itself against further attacks.” As the outcome of that vote makes clear, Israel and the United States continued to stand squarely outside the international consensus on the illegality of the use of force against third-party states to avenge acts of terrorism. But international disagreements ran deeper: to non-Western countries, Israel’s raid amounted to “state terrorism” and should be condemned just as strongly as acts of “terrorism” by non-state actors.

Thus, after noting that his country had “often unequivocally condemned terrorism of every kind and from whatever source,” the Tunisian representative insisted that “nothing can justify this act of terrorism committed by and duly acknowledged by the Government of a Member State against another Member State.”

Over the next couple days, all non-Western members of the Security Council similarly argued that Israel’s raid was criminal, contrary to international law and an act of “state terrorism.” Indeed, the initial draft of the October 1985 resolution contained an explicit condemnation of Israel’s raid as a form of “state terrorism.” It was only under the threat of a US veto that these words were removed from the final text, as were the call for sanctions and, remarkably, an explicit reference to “Tunisian and Palestinian civilian casualties.”

When the question of “international terrorism” was first put on the agenda of the General Assembly in late 1972, discussions focused on the absence of a clear, agreed-upon definition of “terrorism.” Non-western countries expressed worry that, if the term was left undefined, it would be used by Israel, the United States, apartheid South Africa, Portugal (which still retained colonial possessions in Africa), and others as a way to de-legitimize any and all uses of force by “national liberation movements” while justifying their own uses of military force. They insisted that efforts to fight terrorism required that the concept be defined, and that such definition should apply to all political actors, covering violence against civilians by states as well as non-state actors. This would remain their position for the following decades.

#histoire #terrorisme #terrorisme_d'etat #Etats-Unis #victimes_civiles

How the Israeli discourse on terrorism seeks to justify blatant war crimes | Mondoweiss
▻http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/discourse-terrorism-blatant.html

Par #Rémi_Brulin

In fact, in international institutions such as the United Nations, #Israel (alongside the United States) has repeatedly opposed efforts towards defining “terrorism” in a way that would differentiate between attacks against civilian and military targets, a basic historical fact that the US media has consistently failed to report.

The Israeli discourse on “terrorism,” just like the American discourse that it has so heavily influenced, is thus a fundamentally ideological discourse.

It is deeply incompatible with an enlightened understanding of the most basic principles of international law and, despite its claims to the contrary, profoundly weakens the protections the rule law affords to innocent, civilian life.

#Etats-Unis #terrorisme #victimes_civiles

#Remi_Brulin
▻http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rkf8l6

The old “terrorism has nothing to do with our policies: we are attacked because of who we are” line, from 1984:

“[We must] clear our heads of the confusion about terrorism, in many ways the moral confusion, that still seems to plague us, […] Legitimate causes can never justify or excuse terrorism. […] We cannot afford to let an Orwellian corruption of language obscure our understanding of terrorism. We know the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters, and as we look around the world, we have no trouble telling one from the other. […] We have to rid ourselves of this moral confusion which lays the blame for terrorist actions on us or on our policies. […] We are attacked not because of what we are doing wrong but because of what we are doing right. We are right to support the security of Israel, and there is no terrorist act or threat that will change that firm determination. We are attacked not because of some mistake we are making but because of who we are and what we believe in.”
Secretary of State George Schultz, Oct. 25, 1984

History repeats itself with ’war on terror’ – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs
▻http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/10/history-repeats-itself-with-war-on-terror

Par #Remi_Brulin

More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, we are finally getting a clearer picture of the ways in which the United States is waging what it calls its “war on terrorism.”
At the center of the government’s strategy has been the decision to shift the focus away from capturing and interrogating alleged terrorist suspects to killing them, with a series of covert wars prosecuted mostly by the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command frequently relying on so-called kinetic operations: night raids, “find, fix and finish” operations, cruise missile strikes, and the increasing use of drones.
Yet these approaches raise not only fundamental legal and moral questions, but also doubts about their long-term strategic effectiveness. And, to a historian, they also carry disturbing echoes of the past.