The Moral Predicament of Acts of Terrorism
- khachaiehab
- Jan 26, 2024
- 7 min read
This paper is a follow-up to a previous essay that I wrote under the title, “Terrorism Between Politics and Language.” It builds on the previously established and rational definition of terrorism and further examines plausible scenarios where such abhorrent yet controversial acts can be morally justifiable.
First, as I mentioned in my previous essay, terrorism is the deliberate act of targeting civilian assets by a militant entity via the use of force/violence in pursuit of political objectives. However, as the subjective and prejudicial saying used to postulate that “someone’s terrorist is another one’s freedom fighter”, the immorality or righteousness of the act in itself can now supplement the intellectual discourse relating to matters such as national liberation, the right to self-determination, occupation, realism, human rights, international law, and war. As such, the main question that I will be attempting to answer is:
_ Can certain acts of terrorism be morally justifiable?
Accordingly, the hypothesis through which I will be attempting to provide my analysis of the topic goes as follows:
In the case of a significant imbalance of power between an occupying force and an occupied group, the latter’s inability to engage militarily head-on with the former in pursuit of national liberation creates the circumstances under which acts of terrorism become a legitimate tool of resistance.
Before tackling this issue, some points need to be illustrated here. For starters, I am attempting to address an issue that is, for many of the public and the intellectual community, sensitive and controversial, which is not easy to do, given that we live in a world that is becoming ever more polarizing. Therefore, I am not presenting my arguments as the truth, as some might put forward more compelling ones. Finally, I am not justifying one specific state/group’s behavior over the other. I am presenting a standard and objective prism of the employment of acts of terrorism in times of political turmoil.
Now, let me turn to substance.
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Palestinians take control of an Israeli tank after crossing the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
In 1956, during the French occupation of Algeria, three FLN female militants- Samia Lakhdari, Djamila Boupacha, and Zohra Drif- dressed in European-style clothing, walked into three different French-owned properties, where they carried out bombing attacks against the French settlers residing in the capital Algiers. The attacks, terroristic in nature, claimed the lives of several people and injured many others. The bombings were both celebrated by the Algerian population, who had lived as second-class citizens under French colonial rule for more than a century, and condemned by the French government as a criminal act.
67 years apart, on October 7th, 2023, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that presides over the Gaza Strip, carried out its deadliest and most audacious assault against Israel. The attack, which started at dawn, and occurred under the cover of a heavy barrage of rockets, targeted both civilian and military assets that surrounded the Strip, resulting in 1.200 deaths and 240 people being held captives, according to Reuters. The scale and Blitzkrieg nature of the attack was something unprecedented for both Israeli and Western observers. However, it was the civilian death toll that brought about wide condemnation from many Western and non-western governments, labeling it as an “act of terrorism” while prompting Israel to respond with a massive and indiscriminate bombing campaign on Gaza, resulting in more than 20.000 civilians being killed, with “an average of 277 civilian deaths a day”, according to The Washington Post.
In both of the aforementioned cases, there is little doubt as to the terroristic nature of the attacks that unfolded. There is or might be, however, some kerfuffle as to the presence or absence of a “state of occupation”, its magnitude, and its aftermath that could have triggered such acts. In international affairs, an occupation can be seen as a situation when, during a time of international armed conflict, a country or parts thereof, fall under the belligerent provisional control of the hostile power. Accordingly, the century-long French military presence in Algeria, its ubiquitous nature- to include not only a region of the country but the country as a whole, and the ensuing process of settler colonialism puts Algeria firmly and categorically under the definition of occupation.
The same thing can be said of Palestine. Despite the historical record showing the Arab states to be the aggressors, the fact of the matter is that Israel not only thwarted the advancing Arab forces but also expanded geographically beyond the UN-demarcated borders for the Jewish state. By seizing more land that was part of a designated Palestinian state, both in 1948 and 1967, Palestinians effectively found themselves living under Israeli occupation.
UN Partition of Historical Palestine 1947
So, how do those two cases of occupation explain the employment of acts of terrorism as part of the armed struggle for national liberation? And do they warrant such acts?
Politically, from the group’s psyche, any form of occupation is more likely than not to provoke nationalist sentiments over issues such as sovereignty and national identity. Whether it is the 1980 Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan or the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq, societies, even with the collapse of their governments and armed forces, will lash out, violently, at what they perceive to be a mortal threat to their identity and way of life.
More importantly, especially with scenarios of colonial occupation such as in Algeria (1830-1962) and Palestine (1948-the present), not only the institutional and political independence of the occupied society that is undermined but also what the English thinker, John Locke, called the “natural and inalienable rights” of the individual: Life, Liberty, and Property. Whether through the arbitrary confiscation of land, hostile takeover of homes, the placement of military checkpoints in areas exclusive to the indigenous population, administrative imprisonment, torture, or plain old extrajudicial killing, both the French and Israeli governments treated the Algerian and Palestinian populations respectively as second-class citizens. In situations such as these, the preservation of those natural and inalienable rights via armed struggle for national liberation, including acts of terrorism, more often than not trumps moral considerations towards the occupying entity.
The use of the phrase ‘more often than not’ insinuates that not all cases of occupation, however, justify the use of terrorist attacks as a tool of armed resistance. Indeed, it is the ‘imbalance of power’ upon which the legitimacy of those acts is contingent. Furthermore, the imbalance of power formula is comprised of three factors:
1) Military Tech;
2) Casualty-Exchange-Ratio (CER);
3) International Government Support (IGS). (Lack thereof)
This geopolitical triad represents situational criteria based on which acts of terrorism on the part of the occupied group can or cannot be warranted as a means of self-preservation through armed struggle and the attainment of national liberation. This tripartite standard can be further illustrated by comparing the two aforementioned historical cases with the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent occupation of four Ukrainian oblasts (administrative regions).
The four Ukrainian oblasts that Russia has occupied. Some speculations suggest that Moscow might try to add four more west.
When it comes to IGS, both Algeria and Palestine had very little, if any at all, to render the use of acts of terrorism unwarranted. During the 19th century, the darkest era of colonialism, Algeria was effectively deemed a French territory, and any political or social upheaval there was seen as a French internal affair. In the Middle East, Palestinians lack genuine and effective international government support because, in the words of American political scientist, Noam Chomsky, “they don’t have wealth, they don’t have power, so they don’t have rights.” Conversely, it is Israel that enjoys substantial and unprecedented financial, military, and diplomatic government support from the US and other Western countries, in effect, emboldening its settler colonial policies vis-à-vis Palestinian statehood. In Eastern Europe, however, the Russian incursion into Eastern Ukraine prompted swift and robust Western backing of Kyiv. “Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022,” write Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow for the Council on Foreign Relations, “Ukraine has become far and away the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid.” The impact of IGS in halting the Russian advance was also highlighted by “many Western analysts [who] say the military aid provided by the United States and other allies has played a pivotal role in Ukraine’s defense and counteroffensive against Russia,” Masters and Merrow added.
Ukraine has managed to amass substantial Western and International military, financial, and diplomatic backing in the face of the Russian offensive.
Ukraine, as of writing this piece, therefore, has not lacked International Government Support. In addition, the Ukrainian-Russian casualty exchange ratio seems to also favor the former, “with expected loss numbers of 17.223 and 76.687 respectively, as of 23 February 2023,” according to the European Consortium for Political Research. Finally, with the procurement of state-of-the-art Western weaponry, such as the American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems-also known as the HIMARS, the British Storm Shadow cruise missiles or the German Leopard, and the British Challenger tanks, the Ukrainian army does not seem to find itself in short of effective and eclectic military armament. The Ukrainian case, indeed, fails to meet all three factors that would legitimize the use of acts of terrorism as a means to pressure the Russian regime to come to the negotiating table, and even possibly relinquish some of, if not all, its control over Ukrainian territory.
The word ‘terrorism’ is understandably an abhorrent one. Just like ‘murder’, it provokes in us the most human and compassionate sentiments that drive us to reject such deeds in the name of our abstract understanding of right and wrong. But make no mistake, someone who takes a life for pleasure or greed is not like someone who does it in self-defense or defense of others. On the primitive level, humans, much like other creatures, are first and foremost interested in self-preservation. Yet, unlike other creatures, Homo Sapiens abide by moral principles that exist to facilitate life and avoid the Hobbesian notion of ‘state of nature.’ As such, my hypothesis brings to the surface the question of whether and when self-preservation (Life, Liberty, and Property) eclipses our human moral umbrella, and when it does not.
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