Editorial Note written in October 2023.
(This article was originally written and published in 2003 in Miadhu. It is horrifying to see how little has changed in the past 2 decades. The only difference with the passing of time is that the level of despair has deepened, the feeling of helplessness heightened and the inner rage re-kindled, not that the particular flame was ever extinguished.)
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Listening to the media these days’ (and who has any doubts as to who controls the media and thus the content) one cannot help but feel confused and perplexed as to the distinction between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. While you may have thought that you had a clear understanding of the distinction between the two, the shades and hues with which the American dominated media color the legitimate struggle of our Palestinian brothers, forces one to experience the gamut of the emotional spectrum from pure rage to pangs of futility.
Clearly there is a world of difference between a freedom fighter who attempts to re-assert universal values and inalienable rights to a homeland to a terrorist who likes to maim and kill purely on a Freudian pre-text.
How is it that the world and dreams of Shaw and Joyce gets funded and lauded by established institutions in the only super-power in the world, but that the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian People are cannon fodder?
The world is immeasurably different for those who grow up in a refugee camp, whose uncles, cousins nephews, brothers and even fathers gave up their immortal coil in a fight to establish an identity- a national identity. Their perceptions, their whole life runs on a different value system. When they themselves decide to lift the yoke and follow the path, who shall be able to blame them.
Such processes are utterly and totally different from the cruel ravings and rantings of self-obsessed mindless machines who vow to overthrow the institutions and infrastructure of a legitimate government over the mundane and the profane.
From this angle the distinction is quite clear and can be seen with acute clarity by all who are inclined to do so. There are no shades of grey in this division. Everything is Black and White. In this sense the values which divides the two makes the division not so much a line but a deep and yawning chasm.
It is with the aim of achieving clarity and lucidity to this murky issue that the following situations are presented (not always theoretical) designed to “elevate and amuse” the general reader of this column. It is hoped that following may (perhaps) help the reader in choosing the appropriate label for a given context vis-à-vis the freedom fighter – terrorist dichotomy.
Context:
If you are fighting the deprivations imposed on your forefathers more than half a century ago and still continuing today with regard to declaring you an alien in your own homeland, then you are freedom fighter.
Context:
If you are coming back from the attending funeral of a couple of young children who in the innocence and exuberance of youth wandered into a road trap left behind by a cruel and imposing occupier and you decide to hell with it and face these same guys down, then you are freedom fighter.
Context:
If your brother gets gunned down on the streets because the enemy was apparently using “proportionate force” against rocks thrown off a sling, and you decide that you can no longer be a passive on-looker, then you are freedom fighter.
Context:
If your target is the self same person who surrounded and, for want of a better word massacred, innocent civilians in two refugee camps called Sabra and Shatilla, then you are a freedom fighter.
Context:
If your enemy is allowed to use “extra judicial methods” like using helicopter gun ships to wipe out the leadership of your organization and you decide to do something about the guys with the attitude, then you cannot be branded a terrorist.
Context:
If the headquarters of your legitimate government get hit and destroyed by tanks and rockets, and the only runway is dug up and rendered useless and your leadership is embarrassed and humiliated in front of the whole world, then any action you may take to attempt to rectify even a small percentage of the wrongs visited on you, then you should not be branded a terrorist.
Context:
However, if you even dream of opposing, in any manner, the excesses and the abuses of the right-winged government who has lost their collective conscience and bearings to the level of proposing military tribunals to offer a “free and fair” trial to those who will be “innocent until proven guilty” (yeah! right) then the world media would definitely brand you as a terrorist.
September 2003.