Let's talk about terrorism
Was the attack by Hamas militants on Israel last Saturday terrorism, or was it an act of war? More than 1,300 Israeli citizens were killed in the Hamas attack. By far the majority of those killed were civilians, including babies, young children, women and the elderly. Using the yardstick of who was killed alone, the Hamas attack was outside the rules of war. Under international treaties, targeting civilians is a war crime. Looked at from here, or from Israel, or from any nation that considers itself a part of the civilized world, the Hamas attack was terrorism, pure and simple.
The attack differed from what we think of as terrorism only in scale — by the number of Hamas militants engaged in the attack, how well they were organized, and how many were killed. President Biden and others have said that the Hamas attack was the bloodiest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, and that appears to be true. But thousands of Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks over the last 50 years. I couldn’t find a figure for the total number of Israelis killed by terrorists, but a story in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency estimated that more than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada alone, which lasted from late 2000 to mid-2005.
And then there is our own country. The Anti-Defamation League reported in February of this year that 25 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks in 2022, nearly all of them by white supremacist extremists. But that figure does not include the 19 children and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May. According to Education Week, there were 51 school shootings that resulted in deaths or serious injuries last year. A total of 40 people were killed, 32 children and eight adult school employees.
There have been more than 500 mass shootings so far this year in the U.S., defining that term as any shooting in which more than four people are killed or wounded, not including the shooter. There were 645 mass shootings last year, and 689 in 2021. According to a recent study by KFF, one in six Americans has personally witnessed someone being shot. Which raises a question: Must a school shooting, or a mass shooting, or any other shooting for that matter, have a political purpose or a connection to extremism to amount to a terrorist attack?
We don’t need Hamas to attack us for thousands to die. We are doing it to ourselves.
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I will likely be flamed for this, but I am bothered by the fact that there is no mention of the number of innocent Palestinian civilians who have died, the number of which exceeds the number of Israeli deaths. I will agree that the Hamas attack was terrorism, and barbaric. But then I see the suffering that's going on in Gaza, with hospitals overflowing with children burned so badly they're fused to their mothers, thousands of terrified people fleeing for their lives thanks to a completely unworkable evacuation order, people starving and thirsty because water, fuel and electric have been cut off, and it's hard not to think I'm observing a different kind of terrorism.
Hamas is evil, yes, as are its sponsor states. But surely there's a way to bring them to heel that doesn't result in so much human suffering. I do believe that Israel has the right to defend itself, but this eye-for-an-eye approach that both sides have employed since 1948 is a never-ending death spiral.
Brilliant. And sad. And painful. As Pete Seeger said, “We will they [we] ever learn?”