Compartmentalization, contexts of speech and the Israeli origins of the American discourse on " terrorism "
Remi BrulinThis essay documents how, in the early decades of the Cold War, American presidents barely ever used the concept of “terrorism” and, when using it, referred to a very broad type of acts and actors. The term was essentially absent from the discourse, and undefined. An analysis of United Nations debates, Congressional hearings and mainstream media discussions then illustrates how, throughout the 1970s, “terrorism” remained a fully contested, un-defined concept that countless actors, at the international level and in the United States, understood as encompassing political violence by all kinds of actors and, crucially, by States just as much as groups or individuals. In a context where major geopolitical events such as the decolonization movement and various Cold War conflicts loomed large, determining which forms of political violence were and were not legitimate was, unsurprisingly, a highly contentious process. If “terrorism” was a form of violence aimed at civilian populations in order to achieve political purposes, then, many argued, it was a method used by “national liberation movements” in order to achieve self-determination, but also by the military forces of countless States around the world. Said differently, as late as the mid-1970s there existed many different narratives about the nature of “terrorism” around the world. The term was used to refer to non-state actors, notably pro-Palestinian groups such as Black September, but also to describe countries like Portugal (still holding to its colonies in Africa), South Africa (and its Apartheid regime), Israel (for its practices as an occupying power) or the United States (because of its bombing campaigns in Vietnam). Against this historical backdrop, the analysis turns, finally, to the Reagan years, highlighting the central role played by Israel in shaping the American discourse on “terrorism,” notably through the organizations of the 1979 and 1984 conferences described by Kumar. It illustrates how a very specific, narrow and ideologically driven understanding of “terrorism” came to dominate the American discourse, while other possible narratives about legitimate and illegitimate political violence were discarded, simply disappearing from the public debate. This study then argues that actual Israeli and American rhetorical and political practices in the early 1980s did in fact contradict many of the central tenets of the new discourse. In the real world, both States repeatedly used the term “terrorism” to condemn any and all uses of force by their enemies and not, as the discourse claims, solely to condemn attacks against civilian targets. Meanwhile, specific Israeli practices in Lebanon, and American policies in Central America or Afghanistan, clearly demonstrated a readiness on both countries’ part to give support to actors whose methods did undoubtedly fit their own definition of “terrorism.” In fact, Congressional debates show that, throughout the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans repeatedly failed to agree on a clear definition of “terrorism” whenever they attempted to do so in contexts other than the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. When debating US policies in Nicaragua, in El Salvador or in South Africa, Democrats and Republicans were in complete disagreement as to who the “terrorists” were. Just as importantly, in these contexts they developed arguments about the (il)legitimacy of the use of force by state and non-state actors fundamentally different from, and incompatible with, the positions they defended when talking about “terrorism” in the context of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Despite its repeated claims to linguistic as well as moral clarity, the discourse on “terrorism” is thus full of contradictions, and inconsistencies. It is, at heart, the result of a deeply political and ideological process of meaning production, one in which specific political actors, from American neoconservative political operatives to Israeli officials to, as will be suggested in conclusion, the mainstream media, played a central role. Since it burst onto the American political scene some 3 decades ago, this discourse’s central aim has been to de-humanize, de-politicize and de-legitimize the “enemy of the day,” while legitimizing any and all uses of political violence against it. It is, in its contemporary expression, a dangerous, a-historical and anti-intellectual discourse, which should be deconstructed and, ultimately, discarded.
