An 'ism' of its own

by Saul Singer
September 12, 2003 

I used to think that the war against terrorism was misnamed, 
since a war cannot be against a tactic. I still do, in that 
it obscures who the enemy is: radical Islamism. But on second 
thought, terrorism is more than a tactic. It has become an 
"ism" of its own. 

Ideologies often have an intellectual father, and a separate 
father on the stage of world politics and power. Karl Marx and 
Vladimir Lenin are the classic such pair, and the ideologies 
they represented came to bear both their names. Marx laid the 
groundwork and Lenin put it into practice. The fact that the 
practice looked a lot different than the theory does not sever 
the connection between the two. 

Similarly, the "ideology" of modern Islamic terrorism was 
arguably born in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. It took Yasser 
Arafat's PLO to transform terrorism into a catapult for achieving 
political power and the leadership of a people. 

But terrorism is still a means, rather than an end, even for 
Arafat, or so it is thought. But is it? The lines have become 
blurred. 

Arafat was offered a state on a silver platter, without firing a 
shot, by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David summit 
and he refused even to negotiate. Now he is being offered one again 
by Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, if only he would give up 
terrorism, and again he won't bite and even prevented his own 
appointed prime minister from doing so. 

There comes a point when you have to wonder, what is more important 
to Arafat, terrorism or a state? I would argue that, to Arafat, 
both terrorism and a state alongside Israel are means to the real 
end: a state instead of Israel (and probably Jordan, as well). 
What we now see is, if forced to choose, Arafat prefers terrorism. 

The result is that Arafat, the father of Palestinian nationalism, 
has become its undertaker. No one stands astride the path to 
Palestinian statehood more than Arafat. 

There is another way that terrorism has taken on ideology-like 
characteristics. The normal pattern of war and peace is that in 
war, certain tactics are acceptable and, when the war is over, 
they are not. Even bitter wars between countries have not prevented 
rival peoples from reconciling, once the war was over. 

The essence of terrorism is to eliminate the distinction that 
allows peoples to reconcile afterwards the distinction between 
military and civilians. War between armies is less personal; 
after the war it is usually understood that the soldiers on each 
side were doing their job and patriotic duty, and sometimes 
majorities on both sides were not directly involved in the 
fighting at all. 

The same cannot be said when one side "fights" using people who 
walk into crowded cafes and buses, see the utterly innocent men, 
women, and children around them, and blow themselves up. 

Terrorism says there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli, 
no matter how young. Terrorism says that the conflict is not 
about a dispute between peoples, but that people's existence. 

After a war, parents on both sides can start teaching their 
children to live together. But how do you unteach that it is 
right and good to blow up Israeli children, and that those 
who do are heroes? On August 19, a suicide bomber killed 22 and 
wounded 136, including many children, on a bus that came from 
the Western Wall. The next day a picture was released of the 
killer: an imam and teacher shown smiling and holding his 
two children. 

The killer was not desperate, depressed, or a misfit. On the 
contrary, he was a model citizen, a religious leader, and a 
family man someone Palestinians would look up to, all the more so 
now that he has become a "martyr." The military/civilian 
distinction obviously became stretched in World War II, 
for example, but even when cities were bombed, there was the 
notion of strategic targets, not just trying to kill as many 
civilians on the other side as possible. A soldier in a normal 
war can plausibly say he had nothing against the people on the 
other side. 

But what happens when one side's main tactic is terrorism, 
which means its entire attack consists of what in a normal war 
would be termed a war crime? How can the distinction between 
military and civilian, once systematically obliterated by years 
of brainwashing that killing Jewish children is heroic, be restored 
even if a peace agreement is reached? 

The choice of terrorism as a tactic, and particularly the 
preference for terrorism even over the prospect of statehood, 
is integral to the idea that Israel is unacceptable in any size 
or form. Terrorism is only possible for people who have no intention 
of making peace with their victims under any circumstances. It is 
a tactic that is so critical to the ideology it supports that 
the line between tactics and ideology are blurred. 

The same is true for the terrorism of September 11. Terrorism is 
a form of war to the death for both sides. Al-Qaida has no terms 
by which it would make peace with the West, and the feeling is 
mutual. This is why those who think the way to end terrorism is 
to make peace have it backwards. The only way to make peace is 
first to defeat terrorism.