The Moral Imperative

s

correct" media is concerned, there are
Ramat Gan, Israel
no terrorists in the world.
hortly after the atrocity of
This Orwellian distortion of the
Sept. 11, the global head of
English
language was fundamentally
news at Reuters in London
wrong-headed.
The cliche that
pointedly re-emphasized his
equates terrorists to freedom fighters is
agency's policy of not using the term
fundamentally wrong; these terms are
terrorists" to describe the perpetrators
neither identical nor interchangeable.
of-this, or any other, evil act. Stephen
Terrorism is one of the few terms in
Jukes explained that this term is rela-
international law, and a com-
tive, subjective and emo-
mon practice among demo-
tive — "We all know that
cratic nations, on which there
one man's terrorist is
is an accepted and logical defi-
another man's freedom
nition.
fighter."
According to this definition,
Reuters, followed by the
embodied in the legal codes of
venerable British
the United States, Canada and
Broadcasting Corporation
other democratic countries,
(BBC) and a torrent of
while the terrorist regimes in
other news organizations,
Syria and Iraq may seek to
GERALD M.
including the New York
divert attention by creating
STEINBERG
Times and National Public
different definitions, this
Radio (NPR), adopted the
Sp ecial
effort is clearly self-serving,
terms "activists" and "mili-
Commentary
and lacks any moral or legal
tants." People who preach
validity. Planes directed into buildings,
hatred, strap explosives to their bodies
suicide bombing in Israeli cities and
or hijack airplanes to murder as many
firebomb attacks in Northern Ireland
people as possible became "activists"
are all examples of random killing of
— the term also used to describe
non-combatants.
demonstrators protesting environmen-
Freedom fighters (defined as the
tal pollution.
good guys) do not use such tactics.
As a result, as far as the "politically
They may strike opposing armies, com-
Gerald M. Steinberg is a professor,
munications centers and other physical
and director of the program on Conflict
targets, but if they target shopping cen-
Management and Negotiation Political
ters or schools, they are terrorists.
Studies, at Bar-Ilan University. His
This definition — as in the case of
e-mail address is gerald@vms.huji.ac.il

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gious tradition, is one that all percep-
tive non-Orthodox American Jews
need to share with their leaders.
Along with another: Israel is facing a
challenge to its very existence, target-
ed by a violent, cruel and hate-con-
sumed enemy bereft of any evident
military or political solution. What
we Jews desperately need today is to
merit God's protection, to affirm, not
chip away, at our spiritual heritage.
We've all just celebrated Purim,
whose most basic theme is that seem-
ing darkness and threat can turn out
— through the merits of the Jewish
people and God's resultant will — to
be light and salvation.
If those who seek to advance their
religious agendas in Israel at the cost
of true Jewish unity are confronted
by their perceptive congregants'
principled protest, and thereby
come to reconsider their dangerous
folly, the recent High Court deci-
sion could turn out to be a truly
beneficial turning point indeed for
the Jewish people, the beginning of
a moving together rather than a
moving apart. ❑

murder — is quite clear and does not
require deep thinking or extraordinary
intelligence. However, to distinguish
between terrorists and freedom fight-
ers, or the use of military power to
defend against aggression, it is neces-
sary to make moral judgments. And
this is precisely what the head of
Reuters, the BBC, NPR and other
journalists and many academics are
unable to do. The inability to differen-
tiate between good and evil, aggres-
sion and defense, and the absurd claim
that such variations are entirely subjec-
tive and judgmental, reflects a funda-
mental moral blindness.
Instead, many journalists, particular-
ly outside the United States, ridicule
the clear ethical distinctions made by
President George W. Bush, and the
labeling of Palestinian Authority leader
Yasser Arafat and his followers as ter-
rorists. Years ago, many European
politicians and pseudo-intellectuals
sold their moral souls to the devil in
order to justify business deals (and the
huge kickbacks and side-payments
that they bring), to oil-rich dictators
and mass terrorists, such as Iraq's
Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader
Muammar Qaddafi. Morality became
irrelevant.
A few months ago, when the Arab
and Islamic nations gathered in
Durban to condemn Jewish self-deter-
mination as "racism," many non-gov-

ernmental organizations (NGOs),
such as Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International, as well as gov-
ernments in Europe and Canada, were
with them. In sharp contrast, the Bush
administration, to its credit, took no
part in this very blatant example of
international evil and immorality.
For people with a sense of morality
and some basic knowledge of the real
world, the definition of terms such as
terrorism and murder are neither sub-
jective nor dependent on particular
political environments. Effort to sub-
stitute morally neutral words, such as
"militants" or "activists," to describe
unspeakable acts of brutality are, in
themselves, acts of moral complacency
and acceptance of the unacceptable.
The terrorism of the Palestinians in
their drive to destroy the State of
Israel, or of Osama bin Laden and his
Al Qaida network in their war against
the U.S. and the West, are clear exam-
ples of unmitigated evil.
No grievances; real of imagined, can
be used to justify the random murder
of civilians with the goal of intimidat-
ing and frightening these or any other
societies into accepting political or
ideological goals. To paraphrase
Stephen Jukes from Reuters: We all
know (or at least should know) that
this unethical code of conduct reflects
moral bankruptcy and is leading the
descent into barbarism. ❑

Perspectives on Israel: a continuing series

What is "Occupied Territory

to "occupied Palestinian land"
and prejudicial.
r
No side has an exclusive claim to the West Bank, and there has
never been an internationally recognized Arab sovereign over
any of the territories in dispute. Indeed, the violent Arab opposi-
tion to the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan to create a Jewish and an
Arab state in Palestine resulted in the occupation of the pro-
posed Palestinian areas by Jordan and Egypt. The status of
these areas was still in dispute when Israel took them in the
defensive war of 1967, and remains disputed to this day.

References are

Palestinian Authority has established itself in these areas, con-
trolling 95% of the Palestinian population. Palestinian terrorism
and other violations of Oslo have stalled this process as Israel
insists on more of the peace, before they withdraw from more of
the land.

For a fuller explanation of "occupied territories" visit:
http://wvvw.jcpa.org/art/brief1 -1 .htm

U.N. Resolution 242 calls for an Israeli withdrawal from a part
of the territory when a peace agreement is reached, and Israel
has done so with Egypt and Jordan. At Oslo in 1993, Israel even
agreed to withdrawals prior to a full peace treaty. The

Jewish
Commun i ty
Coun cil =WY"; gliggi the

To learn more about how you can become an effective Israel advocate, visit www.iewishcommunitycouncilorq

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