It has already been established previously on this website that even ironing boards can become terrorists. A terrorist is therefore whoever you regard as one. One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, or another's government, or another's hero, or yet another's patriot.

To find an objective meaning for the word terrorist, I did something I seldom do, in trying to establish a meaning of a word for myself - I turned to the dictionary:

terrorist n. a person who uses violent methods to achieve political aims or force a government or community to do something

As a South African I could lay claim to being a witness to terrorism. Bombs exploding in restaurants, civilians being killed while eating lunch, people being burned to death with car tyres, intimidation and violence, police brutality, illegal arrests, beatings and shootings of school children, state murder. Who were the terrorists? That depends on whether you could vote or not.

So when I look at Israel, from which I can emotionally remove myself, I see two groups of terrorists: the bombers and the Israeli government. There are no innocents in these two groups. The innocents are the people they are killing between them. The grandmother and her baby granddaughter buying an ice cream at the shop the bomber has chosen; the 12-year old boy hiding vainly behind his father for protection from Israeli and Palestinian bullets. I cannot pretend to know who is right, as no one seems to be to me, but I can choose never to visit Israel while its government is engaged in terrorism.

And the same applies to the US. Going back to the dictionary definition - it fits the current US administration perfectly. The big news on CNN at the moment is that "Small Bush", as he is called in Chinese, to distinguish him from "Daddy Bush", has approved covert operations against Saddam Hussein. It seems a little ridiculous to me that two terror organizations are fighting against each other.

This is not a war on terror, it's Mafia gang rivalry.

17 June 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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