When does terrorism become war?

[mids2019]

Looking at the news this morning I think the media are finding it difficult to register Palestinian attacks as a terrorism event or simply an attack of one state against another.

I suppose whether you view 5000 tickets as a terrorist atrocity or a declaration of war is dependent on your views on whether Palestine can ever be a functioning state. We plainly in Europe would describe such events as terrorism in that civilian populations have been targeted but in the eternally challenged middle East the use of such a word has political connurtations.

Is this a terrorist attack on Israel?

@NotTerfNorCis

NotTerfNorCis
Hamas is a recognised terrorist organisation. It's proscribed in the UK under the Terrorism Act.

It's still a loaded word.

During the War On Terror the concept was terrorism was used against a range of resistance movements including Chechens rebelling against Russia.

The Nazis called resistance movements terrorists.

America inflicted 'Shock and Awe' on Baghdad, violence to cause psychological pressure, and no one called it terrorism.

It's a word used by the powerful to describe smaller opponents."

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This is an act of terrorism and your post is actively defending a terrorist organisation.

Fortunately the UK Government has announced it will use the full force of the law against those seen to supporting Hamas. Let's hope they follow through with arrests on such terrorist sympathies and defenders.

I think the media including the BBC news need to review how they are covering events in Israel. The systematic murders of many young people at a dessert rave was terrorism or how else do you define the word. The men who entered Israel are terrorists not fighters or militants. There have been deaths of Palestinians and Israelis but one set of deaths was associated with intended and brutal slaying of civilians while another were civilian casualties of military action.

I really do think we need to do justice to reporting of the events that have taken place and be prepared to report them as we did 9/11 or the Paris Attacks in 2015. Those that died in the desert party were victims of cruelly executed murder not collateral damage in a battle between legitimate armed forces.

The British and American governments quite rightly have not shows away from the word terror and the media should do likewise. We all know these events have not taken part in a vacuum but the same could be said about any last heinous terrorist atrocity; they are still terrorist attacks though.

shied

Well said.

It's not defending Hamas at all.

The title of the OP is "When does terrorism become war?"

It is true that groups have been labelled terrorists and resistance - depending on who is doing the labelling.

The French Resistance were labelled as terrorists by the Nazis.

Jewish people who fought against the British to remove us from Palestine were labelled as terrorists.

@cakeorwine since the last thread was hidden by MN, I will reply to one of your posts here.

You responded to a poster's (I think @duchiebun) question:,

"where has this worked in recent years?"

With the following post:

"Look at what happened to the British during our colonial period and how we left countries - including Israel."

That's actually pretty different to the situation in Israel and Palestine with the Israeli army versus Hamas.

In the context of the UK in places such as India or even the United States, the theatre of conflict was situated a very long away from the military power. It makes a big difference to willingness to carry on, resupply, etc.

It's part of why the Allies left Afghanistan when the USA pulled out so abruptly under Biden.

Another factor was WW1 & WW2 which led to war weariness as well. It is expensive maintaining a conflict, so another reason.

And so on.

None of these factors apply to Israel since the conflict is right on their doorstep which makes it cheaper to maintain than one where the conflict zone is thousands of miles away. Unlike the Americans in Afghanistan, the Israelis know terrain, culture, society, etc in the Middle East.

In recent times, the British Army is an example of a force that was successful against a terrorist group. As I explained previously, PIRA failed to achieve their objectives whilst the British Government achieved theirs.

Hamas doesn't have the capability of defeating the Israeli State. Indeed, like PIRA before them, they have failed to push the Israelis into the sea.

Like the British Army, the Israeli Defence Force can sustain any losses as overall it doesn't really hurt their numbers. Indeed, in 1972 a UK Government Minister told PIRA leaders that they lose more soldiers in a road accident in Germany in one year than PIRA could inflict. Over nearly 40 years, just 0.5% of the total number of British deployment were murdered by PIRA during Operation Banner. Another 0.5% of British deployment were killed in road traffic accidents during Operation Banner.

Compare that with the proportion of PIRA members arrested, imprisoned and killed. They were more likely to be arrested than killed, BTW.

Israel can absorb all that Hamas can throw at them. At the same time, terrorist organisations are what we call destructive cults. Essentially, from PIRA to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Quaeda, Taliban and so on they all accept they run the real risk of ending up dead or in prison.

Another recent time example that shows the track record is against Hamas is how Spain crushed the terrorist group ETA. Again, Spanish Government and ETA exist in the same State. Not thousands of miles away.

So, there really isn't a success story of terrorists defeating a modern State in the same area they're living in. The Taliban in Afghanistan don't fit - the Allies are based thousands of miles away & that insurgency was originally defeated quite quickly too. Taliban spent a lot of time regrouping before coming back to find the Western trained Afghanistan army and government couldn't cope. USA under Biden decided to pull out in the sudden, chaotic way they did - very difficult to defeat insurgencies if located on the other side of the world.

For Hamas, Israel is right on its doorstep so their terrorism will not succeed since Israel is generally well prepared to deal with it via counter-terrorism efforts. These don't always succeed, but defences will be improved following it. The UK Government and British Army learned from mistakes against PIRA, so will Israel against Hamas.

Gang raping and murdering girls, spitting in their corpses, shooting and torturing elderly people in care homes, parading naked corpses of young women in social media is fucking terrorism.

I find those posts pretty galling

I don’t know how pp can make those claims on not terrorism

Yes it is

But the actual comment was that some people label groups as terrorists when others use different terms.

Hamas is a terrorist group. In my opinion and the opinion of many others.

Other groups that some people consider terrorists have also been labelled as freedom fighters / resistance.

And posting that comment should not get someone to talk about the full force of the law being used as it's defending Hamas.

These are terrorism.

You would agree though that some groups in history that have been labelled as terrorists by some people have also been labelled as freedom fighters by others.

Which is what was being pointed out.

But why would PP make that point in the first place, except to suggest that labelling Hamas as a terrorist organisation is equally tenuous?

Good question!

I posted earlier in this thread that the phrase "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" cliché doesn't particularly stand up well under close scrutiny. That post is below:

"The clichéd statement "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is usually used by sneaking regarders of terrorism.

In any case, it doesn't depend on where you live or nationality.

Consider the Provisional Sinn Féin, Provisional IRA, Provisional Army Council and Provisional Republican Movement. PSF censored on broadcast TV in the Republic of Ireland first and then the UK followed.

PIRA was and remains an illegal organisation on both sides of the border as well. During the Troubles, they never came close to having majority support in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. The community PIRA claimed to be defending believed in 1967 and 1998 that terrorist violence to end partition is wrong. Instead of voting for PSF, they voted SDLP from 1970-2001 circa a whopping 70%.

So, the statement "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" falls down flat.

Civilians being killed doesn't automatically make a State a terrorist as well. The very nature of terrorist groups in operating from civilian areas, infrastructure and using civilians including children in attacks means civilian deaths by any State is going to be unavoidable.

See the attachments from NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE).

It probably won't surprise anyone here that Hamas and PSF/PIRA are also linked together along with other groups in an international terrorist network. See a PIRA mural demonstrating so. PIRA and Hamas trained in Libya under Colonel Gaddafi too. Mandela's ANC/MK is another terrorist link.

Again, the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" cliché falls flat."

So, the very phrase is intended by terrorist groups, their fellow travellers and sneaking regarders to undermine the International Community's view on terrorism by trying to convince people via terrorist propaganda that the label plus definition itself is tenuous. They wish to undermine Sovereign States and their domestic laws since these usually successfully seriously hurt terrorist groups.

Another example of a terrorist group FAILING to defeat a State is the Red Army Faction in Germany.

There is no success story of a terrorist group defeating a State in their own backyard to date. 🤷‍♂️

So sorry for your losses.

Are you able to PM me direct links please to Magen David Adom and United hatzalah? I would like to donate and to share, please.

Thank you

If Hamas is terrorism why bring up the other groups?

It’s not relevant

@cakeorwine

"The title of the OP is "When does terrorism become war?"

It is true that groups have been labelled terrorists and resistance - depending on who is doing the labelling.

The French Resistance were labelled as terrorists by the Nazis.

Jewish people who fought against the British to remove us from Palestine were labelled as terrorists."

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You are absolutely right that it all depends on who is doing the labelling which is who is in charge at that point. It is irrelevant what you or I think.

So in the case of the France during WW2 the German Army was in charge and as such labelled the French Resistance as terrorist and those that sympathised with their cause as terrorist supporters who they would execute or imprison whether the average French person agreed or not.

The UK government has labelled Hamas as a terrorist organisation and those that sympathise with their cause as terrorist supporters. As such under the law they should be imprisoned whether the average British citizen agrees or not.

Islamists aren't fighting for "freedom", but rather authoritarian rule.

And they don't just want some of the territory, they want it all. And no, they wouldn't stop the violence even if they could take all of Israel.

I think one or two mentioned Israeli security and intelligence earlier in this thread.

Apply the expanded Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to bad intentions (e.g., malice or self-interest) that which is adequately explained by other causes (e.g., stupidity, ignorance, carelessness, incompetence, or lack of information)."

People commonly misunderstand the world of intelligence. Often, the assumption is that intelligence is always of high quality - wrong, it greatly varies from detailed information to very vague information. The other common assumption is that if an attack gets through, its deliberately allowed to happen which doesn't make much sense.

Often, contextual information is left out lest it undermine the conspiracy that intelligence allowed something to happen or to show they're incompetent. Other explanations exist such as incorrect information supplied, information not passed along the security chain, situations suddenly changed so intelligence agencies had to change plans last minute and many more possible explanations.

Intelligence and security failures can have multiple explanations as shown by the US enquiry into 9/11.

Report into US intelligence failures here:

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/0506/chapter5.htm

It may provide insight into the Israeli failures. It doesn't mean its an automatic Israeli false flag or anything like that - that kind of conspiracy theory would need proper evidence, not speculation and speculation inevitably benefits terrorist groups as they seek to undermine public confidence in any States' intelligence agencies.

Yes I will do it now, thank you.

Actually @Truthisbetterthanlies I've pm'd you but I will share the links too in case anyone else wants to donate.

Hatzalah https://israelrescue.org/campaign/israel-under-attack/
Magen David adom https://mdauk.org/donate/

The following is an excellent point most people don't understand about intelligence:

"In fact, experts say the sheer quantity of intelligence that Israel collects on Hamas, as well as the group’s constant activity and organizing, may have played a role in obscuring plans for this particular attack amid the endless barrage of potentially credible threats."

And:

"“Intelligence in an environment like Israel isn't finding a needle in a haystack—it's finding the needle that will hurt you in a pile of needles,” Williams says. “Given the number of Hamas members involved in the invasion, it's not plausible to me that Israel missed every human intelligence reflection of the planning. But I feel confident that there are always Hamas operatives talking about credible plans to attack the IDF. So Israel can't respond with force to every threat, even every credible one. They'd be at a heightened state of alert or actively engaged all the time, and that's probably actually worse for security.”

• Jake Williams, a former US National Security Agency hacker and current faculty member at the Institute for Applied Network Security

www.wired.co.uk/article/israel-hamas-war-surveillance

Interesting, DownNative.

Can I ask you a question I asked you previously but may have got lost among all the previous trolling posts?

You've posted a lot about the N Ireland peace process. How much do you think the involvement of women, and women having had enough, there, led to peace? Could women playing a greater role in finding solutions in the middle east help at all?

I believe my response is in one of the now deleted threads, but I'll reproduce it later from memory. 👍

Ah, sorry.

I went to bed and must have missed it.

Thank you - have donated x

If anyone is interested there is there is a post on X [Twitter] of fans of Persepolis FC chanting ' You can stick the Palestine flag up your arse'. Considering support of Israel is a crime in Iran that takes some bravery.