By Sundus Aladra

As we continue to witness Israel’s brutal violence unleashed upon the Gaza Strip for more than a year, it’s worth taking a moment to step back and allow the context of history to paint the larger picture.

Although it’s only relatively recently that all eyes have turned to Gaza, and by extension Palestine, the reality is that this current display of savagery and inhumanity is not a sudden event or isolated incident.

A quick look at the timeline exposes that this current genocide traces its roots to the very foundation of Israel in 1948 by the Zionist movement.

In this interview with Dr. Fadi Zatari, Assistant Professor in Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Türkiye, we delve into the association between the violence of the present and the violence of the past, analyzing aspects of the Zionist project, and reconsidering the implications of the oft-used terms of ‘violence’ and ‘terrorism’, in the case of Palestine.

How did the threat of violence play a role in the Nakba of 1948 and the establishment of Israel? Was it an actual practice of violence and terrorizing Palestinians, or just a threat of violence?

One of the elements that is used to define terrorist organizations is an element called ‘generating public fear’. The Zionists as a terrorist organization did this intentionally. They wanted to generate public fear on all levels in Palestine, even within the British army, as they were also targets. Meanwhile one should remember that there is no one to protect the Palestinians. They don’t have a police force or any such institution.

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When there was a conflict between Palestinians, called, at that time, Arabs, and the newly expanding population of Jewish settlers, the British stood firmly with the Zionists. For instance, if the British discovered a gun in a Palestinian’s house, they would punish the owner, maybe with death. The British also knew about armed groups or combatants within the Jewish self-imposed ghettos, but the British wouldn’t touch them.

So, in this atmosphere, as a Palestinian you feel insecure because you don’t have an army, and the one ruling over you, which is the British, is standing with the new Jewish immigrants, so you don’t feel that you have anyone to protect you. At the same time, Palestinians were witnessing other villages near them whose communities were being massacred, like in the well-known massacre of Deir Yassin. At the time there were no borders between Palestine and Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.

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Therefore, many Palestinians facing this situation, naturally chose to take some of their belongings, lock their doors behind them, and relocate to neighboring countries, believing it would be a temporary stay. This is to say, the threat of violence, together with the actual practice of violence, played a significant role in the (Zionists’) actions on the ground to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and to depopulate historical Palestine in the Nakba of 1948, and to establish Israel.

How effective is the Israeli usage of violence and terrorism practiced against Palestinians in this reality?

Usually, violence works ideally for the colonizer. Nevertheless, the moment violence stops being effective, that is a disaster for the colonizer. And looking at what is going on in Gaza, we can see that this is exactly what’s happening. The maximum amount of violence they can exert, stopped playing an effective role in deterring the indigenous population from resisting blatant injustice. In the wars in 1948 or 1967, like always throughout history, Israel used violence efficiently.

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I even remember not too many years ago, in my city, Hebron, a few Israeli soldiers could easily enforce a curfew across the whole city. They would simply and suddenly announce in the streets: “A curfew has been enforced, no one can leave their homes”. The curfew would be effective until the same soldiers would come back and say: “The curfew is lifted for two hours”. Then people could leave their homes only for two hours, to buy basic necessities, and that’s it. I witnessed this from my window, seeing two or three soldiers carrying this out.

Nowadays, this is impossible, but at that time, Israeli violence used to be an effective deterrent. From time to time they would beat someone in the street or shoot one person, and that was enough to “discipline” the entire city. Nowadays, look what they are doing in Gaza, bombing endlessly, brutally, for more than a year, and yet there is no sign that it’s deterring Palestinians from standing up for themselves – it’s no more effective now. We’re reaching the point where violence becomes irrelevant. It doesn’t impact the change that the perpetrator intends it to impact. For me, this indicates the beginning of the collapse of the colonizer.

Despite its long history steeped in violence, until very recently, Israel’s identity as a legal state and equal member of the international community was largely undisputed. How does Israel attempt to maintain a legitimate image as a state?

To answer this question we must return to the foundation again. Israel was established through the operations of paramilitary terrorist organizations such as Lehi. Even the British government called them terrorist organizations at the time. Later on, when Israel was established, all of these militia fighters became part of the Israeli army.

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They went from being non-state actors, as terrorist organizations or paramilitary groups, to being an army of a structured, recognized state. And of course, we have to speak about ‘Hasbara’ – the term referring to Israeli propaganda. It’s important to mention that Hasbara propaganda started before the establishment of Israel. Zionists and later, Israelis continued to construct lies and fallacies through Hasbara. For example, they present the army of Israel as ‘the most moral army in the world’.

This is totally implausible. How can you consider them the most moral army in the world if an Israeli soldier killed a Palestinian child in the West Bank, and the family of the Palestinian child cannot even sue the soldier in court? Where is the justice and morality here? Where is the ‘most moral army’ in this aspect?

Even Netanyahu during the genocide in Gaza, kept saying that the Israeli army is the ‘most moral in the world’. Of course, in the face of the genocide this claim has been severely damaged. It needs no effort to expose this. It’s very clear from the videos on the internet that are public for all to see.

Another example is in the Israeli prison, Sde Teiman, it was confirmed and shown that an Israeli soldier was raping Palestinians. This incident went public in Israel and created a national debate around the acceptability of such actions by Israeli soldiers. In a survey conducted in Israel, the majority of Jews in Israel, 65% expressed prison rape suspects shouldn’t face criminal charges – that it’s okay to rape Palestinians because they are the evil enemy.

Rape and Torture at Israel’s Sde Teiman Concentration Camp – Video Analysis

How can this be connected to morality? It’s indeed unbelievable. All of this is enabled by Hasbara, Israeli propaganda policies. In this regard, one of the biggest achievements of the Palestinian resistance operation starting on October 7th, 2023, the Al Aqsa Flood Operation, is the severe blows it has dealt to Israeli Hasbara. Now who will believe that the Israeli army is the ‘most moral in the world’?

What do you think is the obstacle preventing Israel’s actions from being classified as legitimate state violence instead of terrorism – violence practiced in a non-legitimate and unacceptable way?

The main answer lies in that the label of terrorism is usually reserved for violence practiced by non-state actors. The state, according to terrorism studies, doesn’t practice terrorism. This ties into the idea of the modern state as the new God. So the state is viewed with the same reverence and superiority as God, traditionally the highest or divine authority.

So unfortunately, in terrorism studies, and in assessing the literature of the field, the classical way of understanding terrorism doesn’t connect terrorism with the state. For example, George W. Bush of the United States is not referred to as a terrorist, because of what he did in Iraq or Afghanistan. The term terrorism is reserved only for non-state actors.

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That’s why it’s uncommon to see what Israel is doing identified as terrorism, because it’s seen as a state, and these actions are acceptable from states. The term ‘governmental terrorism’ is an exception, but that is used to refer to when states target their own citizens. In the West Bank and Gaza, it’s not the Israeli citizens that are targeted by Israel. So, that term wouldn’t apply here.

Hence, we need to rethink terrorism— why it’s unacceptable when applied to the state, why it’s only applied to non-state actors. As an experiment, try to recall an example of a terrorist organization. You’ll be able to name several groups, but you wouldn’t name states.

As an exception, perhaps sometimes journalists can label Israel as a terrorist state. However in academia, in mainstream media, George W. Bush will not be described as a terrorist. Even Hitler, have you ever heard Hitler being referred to as a terrorist? He’s always painted as evil, as a terrible criminal, but never as a terrorist.

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Another example comes from Bruce Hoffman, one of the pioneers in terrorism studies. When writing about France’s colonization of Algeria, he described the Algerian people, who were fighting the French colonization, as terrorists. This is very strange. Is the people’s liberation movement, fighting the colonizer, terrorism? It is shocking to see this.

It’s worth noting that Hoffman has many books on terrorism, his works are well known within terrorism studies and included in the syllabi of many universities, and many influential academics present the same perspective. That’s why the concepts are politically constructed in a way that terrorism will not be used in the case of the state and Israel is considered as one of these states.

We can see that the Israeli practice of violence against Palestinians is not accidental, nor is it a new phenomenon. Is ‘violence’, then, the best way to describe this Israeli practice?

This is an important question. We might need to reconsider the terms we use in this context. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that ‘terrorizing’ or ‘terrorism’ are better terms because ‘violence’ is seen as acceptable for states to practice. Violence is something that is sometimes deemed legitimate, and other times, illegitimate. But what the Israelis are doing is not violence, it’s a kind of terrorizing, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Palestinian, You are on Your Own – Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said and Gaza

When we use the term violence in this context, we are being flexible, and using it with its negative connotation. But we also understand that violence could also have a positive or acceptable connotation. For example, the police could use violence to protect other people, which is legitimate. But with terrorism, it’s a different story. Therefore, I personally prefer to use terms such as Israeli genocide, terror, oppression, persecution, and ethnic cleansing, and it is even conceivable to depict what is occurring in Gaza as a modern holocaust.