The Insanity is not Confined to the Middle East

Today I read that none other than our own PM Trudeau forcefully asserted that Hamas is a terrorist organization and not freedom fighters.

So what is the difference between a terrorist group and freedom fighters? Simple, you agree with the cause of freedom fighters and you disagree with the cause of terrorists. In general, both tend to use terrorism to achieve their political ends so really the only difference is whether you agree with the political ends of a given group.

After all, terrorism is just a political tool, used by a weaker force against a stronger force, in order to effect political change in the terrorists' favour. They use it because to attempt to actually go against the stronger force in a straight up military battle is to invite annihilation. As well, they lack the traditional, peaceful levers of power that can be used to effect political change.

I have heard some argue that terrorism does not work and in many cases they are correct. However the Taliban, the IRA, the Haganah, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang would take issue with such a sweeping generalization. The first two most would be familiar with. Both the Taliban and the IRA successfully used terror tactics to force a political change. It took time but they achieved their political objectives. They are not the only examples, they are just a couple most would be familiar with.

The other three might not be familiar to everybody. They were three organizations that fought for an independent Jewish state in British Palestine from the 1930s to the departure of the British from Palestine shortly after the Second World War. During that period the three groups carried typical terrorist tactics of bombings, assassinations and sabotage, killing more than 1000 military personnel and civilians between 1945 and 1947 alone. Their tactics worked and the British left Palestine in 1947 and the State of Israel was born.

For Israelis the members of these groups are considered to be freedom fighters. The British government of the day had a different view and the descendants of the people they killed and injured might also have a different point of view.

All of this is to say that things are not nearly as cut and dried as our PM stated today.

I stated in my previous post that Israel will not achieve true security until it makes an equitable peace with its neighbours, including the Palestinians. To make that happen the international community needs to put political pressure on the Israeli government to make the effort for peace. They also need to put the same pressure on the Palestinians to put their own house in order and to choose a credible negotiation team that can speak for all Palestinians in peace negotiations. All involved, Israeli, Palestinian and other interested governments must have the intestinal fortitude to ignore provocations by the hard-liners on both sides that would do every thing in their power to scupper any peace efforts. Both need to negotiate in good faith and create a process that will survive the inevitable bumps in the road. All need to be patient.

Israel will have to make more concessions than the Palestinians because they hold virtually all of the cards. There is not much the Palestinians can really concede that would result in an equitable peace. And an inequitable peace is not sufficient. History is full of examples of how inequitable peace only pushes war down the road and the resulting war is often much worse than the war that was ended by that peace.

Of course, none of that is going to happen for a whole host of reasons. Everybody is doing the same thing they have been doing for decades and expecting different results. The result is going to be the continued tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.