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<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/03/fighting-israeli-occupying-forces-is-terrorism-boycotting-is-anti-semitism-whats-allowed/">https://theintercept.com/2016/04/03/fighting-israeli-occupying-forces-is-terrorism-boycotting-is-anti-semitism-whats-allowed/</a><br>
<br>
</small></small></small></b><b><big><big>Fighting Israeli
Occupying Forces Is “Terrorism.” Boycotting Is
“Anti-Semitism.” What’s Allowed?</big></big></b><br>
<br>
glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com - April 3, 2016<br>
<br>
THAT “TERRORISM” IS a malleable term of propaganda, with no fixed
meaning or consistent application, is now quite well-established.
Still, its recent application to a spate of violence targeting
Israel’s occupying soldiers in the West Bank is so manipulative and
extreme that it’s well worth highlighting.<br>
<br>
Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank for decades (it’s also
still functionally occupying Gaza, as this two-minute video proves).
The West Bank “occupation is illegal under international law and the
United Nations has repeatedly told the country’s government to
vacate Palestinian territory.” Even ardent defenders of Israel admit
that “the West Bank is under a legal regime of belligerent
occupation” and “Israel’s settlement enterprise is, and has always
been, grossly illegal under international law.” Despite this world
consensus, Israeli settlements continue to grow rapidly. Israel is
not engaged in any meaningful efforts to negotiate an agreement to
end the occupation, and leading Israeli ministers now openly oppose
such efforts.<br>
<br>
In response to this, there has been a series of attacks over the
past year by Palestinians on Israeli occupying soldiers in the West
Bank. In the Israeli and American press, the Palestinians attacking
these occupying soldiers are invariably called “terrorists” and
their attacks are denounced as “terrorism” (“The two soldiers were
stabbed while at a guard post at the Har Bracha settlement, located
in the northern West Bank. … Troops were searching for the
terrorists”).<br>
<br>
For those (such as myself) who have long contended that the term
“terrorism” now has little meaning beyond “violence by Muslims
against the West and its allies,” and no purpose other than to
delegitimize violence by one side while legitimizing the other
side’s, can there be any better proof than this?<br>
<br>
There have been Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians of course
(while far more Palestinian civilians have died at the hands of the
Israeli army), but in these specific cases, these Palestinians are
attacking purely military targets, not civilians. Those military
targets are soldiers deployed to their soil as part of an illegal
occupying army. In what conceivable sense can that be “terrorism”?
If fighting an occupying army is now “terrorism” simply because the
army belongs to Israel and the attackers are Palestinian, is it not
incredibly obvious how this term is exploited?<br>
<br>
The U.S. has frequently done the same: invade and occupy countries
such as Iraq and Afghanistan and then label anyone who fights their
occupying armies as “terrorists,” even putting some in Guantánamo
for that. Similarly, attacks against military bases of the U.S.,
U.K., and other Western countries are routinely labeled “terrorism.”<br>
<br>
Needless to say, both Americans and Israelis (along with most others
in the world) reserve for themselves the absolute right to fight
against any foreign army that occupies their land. Indeed,
Hollywood, in the 1980s, produced a film called Red Dawn, which
imagined an occupation of the U.S. by the Soviet Union and its
Nicaraguan and Cuban allies. It told the story of the heroic U.S.
citizens, led by high school students, who waged a guerrilla war
against the occupying troops, killing dozens upon dozens of them.
Imagine the widespread confusion, and outrage, that would have
resulted if someone accused the filmmakers of glorifying “terrorism”
by demonizing the fictional American resisters as “terrorists”:<br>
<br>
The film was updated in 2012 with a sequel depicting “one group of
unlikely [American] heroes” who waged guerrilla warfare against
North Korean forces who had invaded and occupied the U.S. (the film
originally depicted these American heroes attacking and killing an
occupying army from China, but, in post-production, the producers
changed the identity of the occupiers to North Korean in order to
preserve access to Chinese theaters):<br>
<br>
When Americans resist military occupation by fighting against
occupying troops on their soil, they are noble heroes. But when
Palestinians do this, they are “terrorists.” This discourse, by
design, equates Palestinians resisting occupation by fighting
against an occupying army with al Qaeda and ISIS, and thus posits
that any use of force by Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation —
even when done on Palestinian soil, aimed exclusively at Israeli
military targets there — is illegitimate.<br>
<br>
So if violent resistance is illegitimate “terrorism,” what about
other alternatives for resisting the decades-old, still-expanding
illegal Israeli occupation? The nonviolent route embraced by
Palestinian activists and their anti-occupation allies around the
world is a campaign of boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS)
aimed at Israel, modeled after the campaign that helped end South
Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s (a regime that, just by the
way, was a close ally of both the U.S. and Israel).<br>
<br>
But there is a highly successful campaign by Israel and its U.S.
allies not only to decree this nonviolent boycott campaign
illegitimate, but literally to outlaw it. Official bodies are
enacting rules to censor and officially suppress it by equating the
campaign with “anti-Semitism” even though, as fervent Israel
supporter Eric Alterman wrote in the New York Times this week, “it
is filled with young Jews.”<br>
<br>
The Intercept and other outlets have repeatedly reported on official
governmental and university actions to ban BDS activism by equating
it with “anti-Semitism.” In California, the regents of the nation’s
largest university system just enacted a resolution strongly
implying that BDS activism is anti-Semitic and thus in violation of
university rules. In New York last week, dozens of state
legislators, from both parties, have demanded the de-funding of a
pro-Palestinian group at CUNY, a move denounced by the campus free
speech group FIRE. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when
running for office, announced that BDS “has no place on Canadian
campuses.” In France, people are literally arrested as criminals
under “hate speech” laws for wearing T-shirts advocating BDS.
Measures in the U.K. have been enacted to legally bar support for
such boycott movements. Laws and proposed bills in Israel ban
advocacy of the movement and bar supporters from entering Israel.<br>
<br>
So look at what has happened here. When Palestinians fight against
occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced — and often
killed — as “terrorists.” Meanwhile, nonviolent campaigns to end the
occupation through a South Africa-style boycott are demonized as
“anti-Semitism” and officially barred — censored — in all sorts of
ways, in numerous countries around the world.<br>
<br>
If fighting Israeli occupying forces is barred as “terrorism,” and
nonviolent boycotts against Israel are barred as “anti-Semitism,”
then what is considered a legitimate means for Palestinians and
their allies to resist and end the decadeslong, illegal Israeli
occupation? The answer is: nothing. Palestinians are obliged to
submit to Israeli occupation in a way that none of the people
demanding that would ever themselves submit to occupation of their
land. All forms of resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed
illegitimate. That, manifestly, is the whole point of all of this.<br>
<br>
Top photo: Israeli soldiers stand near the body of a Palestinian who
was shot and killed by a soldier while lying wounded on the ground
after a stabbing attack in Hebron in the West Bank on March 24,
2016.<br>
<br>
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