First published: 21 August 2006
If any further indication were required of the terrorist character of the Israeli state it is merely necessary to take the Palestinian casualty figures since mid June. On 24 June Israel’s military forces kidnapped two Palestinian civilians near Rafah in the Gaza strip – the brothers Osama Muamar and Mustafa Muamar. No significant international media hue and cry was raised. It was followed on 25 June by the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier corporal Gilad Shalit by Palestinians – regarding which of course the US and UK media made a huge fuss. Since then Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinian civilians. The Israeli response to one kidnapping, which was only half of what they had carried out themselves the day before, was therefore to kill 200 people. It is certainly ‘disproportionate’, to use that vocabulary. But it is far more than that. If one kidnapping had been met by Axis forces even in the worst days of World War II by killing 200 people that would have been categorised as a war crime. But it is typical of the Israeli state’s policy. The sole aim of such a policy is to attempt to terrorise enemies. Israeli policy is in the most fundamental sense terrorist in its essentials.
From a fundamental social point of view Israel is a colonial settler state – one based on forcibly seizing land from the original Palestinian inhabitants. But from a political point of view it might be characterised as a ‘robber terrorist’ state.