Tuesday Mezze: Is One Man's Terrorist Another Man's Freedom Fighter?
Mezze - المزة - a wide selection of small dishes served as appetizers, including such delicacies as hummus, cheese, eggplant, brains, stuffed grape leaves, calamari, and much more
Prologue:
In 1975, British journalist Gerald Seymour wrote, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” in Harry’s Game, about the British conflict with the IRA.
In 2009, Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi, told the New York Times: “If you are with the Americans, you are a legitimate fighter, you are a hero, but if you are fighting against a country supported by America, then you are a terrorist.”
Good Afternoon Family, Friends, Colleagues,
I meant to post the column below this past Sunday night but after seeing news reports about yet another alleged terrorist attack on Jews living in America - this time in Boulder CO - I decided to wait a few more hours to post it - to add this prologue and post it.
Although I believe that we must all be careful about using the word terrorism, especially in the context of cycles of violence where marginalized, vulnerable, and occupied peoples find themselves targeted by some of the world's most powerful armies - against the most lethal weapons - I want to be clear: All acts of violence targeting people because of faith, race, ethnicity, or Otherness - including against Jews - must be condemned as terrorism.
All acts.
All acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, erasure, and forced starvation must be condemned.
All perpetrators condemned as terrorists.
Recently, within the last two weeks, Elias Rodriguez and Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly committed criminal acts of terrorism. And, regardless of stated intent, I believe the attacks were antisemitic as well.
They allegedly committed cowardly attacks of violence and whatever they chanted in support of Palestine, uttered while committing such heinous acts, will only, I believe, serve to further damage the cause they claim to support.
A cause I believe is just: The right of Palestinians to be free from the River to the Sea.
Such acts are stupid and reprehensible and will probably increase the already obscene levels of deportation, attempted intimidation, and suppression of movement and free speech rights of pro-Palestinian voices in America.
Salamaat,
Robert
Is One Man's Terrorist Another Man's Freedom Fighter?
I remember when JFK, RFK, and MLK were assassinated. I remember Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali; remember so many others.
I remember Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland; so many others.
I remember Americans Rachel Corrie and Shireen Abu Akleh.
Remember poet Refaat Alareer and six-year old Hind Rajab.
As June 5th approaches I remember the Six-Day War raging in 1967, and in the following year being in Los Angeles in proximity to Senator Robert Kennedy's assassination on June 5, 1968.
I remember, too, that it was later, in 1989, that RFK's assassin, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan - a Palestinian who came to America from Amman Jordan - told interviewer David Frost: My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.
I remember learning, as a young person - when I was being called SandN****R and Camel Jockey - that in this land I will always be the Other.
Such moments came to mind recently when a reader posted: Robert, Please condemn the murder of two young people associated with the Israeli Embassy in DC last night, who were mindlessly, ruthlessly shot to death by an assailant purportedly shouting, 'Free Palestine.' That is the type of conduct which has caused US voters to elect Donald Trump. *
I, the Other, must condemn - perform a ritualistic cleansing - in order to validate my presence, to receive permission to narrate.
Trust me, I will, not because you demand it but in spite of you.
My reader was referring to the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC - Sarah Lynn Milgram and Yaron Lischinsky - who were killed May 21st as they were leaving the Capital Jewish Museum.
Elias Rodriguez of Chicago has been charged with first degree murder (two counts) and the murder of foreign officials.
According to an FBI special agent's affidavit, Rodriguez claimed: I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.
My first reaction to my reader's demand was that they didn't know my writing very well. From the moment Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, for example, I condemned their terrorism and I have stated that while the Palestinians have, under international law, the right of resistance - not just for self defense but for liberation and freedom - including by force - such resistance cannot include attacks on civilians, whether Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians, Americans, or any other.
My second reaction was to check to see how many times the reader had condemned genocide, ethnic cleansing, scholasticide, torture, forced starvation, or other depredations visited upon occupied and oppressed peoples by the State of Israel.
So far I find only Crickets.
My third reaction was to be offended.
I remember that no one asked me to condemn the murderer of 6-year old Palestinian-American, Wadea Al Fayoume, who was stabbed to death in Illinois by his family's landlord, nor was I asked to condemn California college professor, Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, who is accused of striking protestor Paul Kessler with a megaphone causing Kessler's death.
The suggestion implicit in my reader's comment was - to my mind - that for me not to condemn a criminal act against two Jews is somehow to condone it and, further, that every supporter of the Palestinian right to be free from the river to the sea must condemn acts made in their name whether they are responsible for them or not.
But, as I consider all this days later, I think that the terroristic murder of two Israelis and the dangerous, delusional and counterproductive criminal act of their American murderer who may have believed that somehow he was advancing the Palestinian cause - is that it gives me an opportunity not to excuse or justify but to try to contextualize my understanding of what is unfolding before us.
The murder was wrong. The murder of civilians is always wrong and to deliberately take the lives of the innocent is always condemnable and criminal - whether of two lovers in Washington by gunshot or by military might of the husband and 9 [of 10] children of a Palestinian pediatrician working in Gaza.
Yet, what I witness is that beyond the murders of Milgram and Lischinsky what is not being discussed is how the criminality and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the other occupied territories is widening widening the killing fields.
What is not being discussed is that there is a direct connection between what Israel is doing and what this murderer did in Washington DC - that America's embrace and complicity in genocide - as defined by Israelis - is bringing the fear, the killing fields, the irrationality closer to all of us.
Closer to your loved ones and mine.
Most importantly, what is not being discussed is the possibility that the more we honor and defend the humanity of Palestinians in occupied Gaza and the occupied territories of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the safer all peoples whose lives intersect will be safer, including those of Israelis and Jews.
Last week, when an Israeli politician - Yair Golan, a former Israeli military deputy chief of staff chose to speak truth to power and said in an interview that Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country... he was attacked across that nation's political spectrum.
Golan also said that ... a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations.
That is the reality; what is happening and that is wrong, dangerous, and evil.
Among we who are watching, we who are targets, many knew it was inevitable not because it was to be welcomed or invited but because we have witnessed so many people of power and privilege stand by - some profiting - seemingly indifferent, blind to the evil.
They didn’t believe us, didn’t recognize our fear as equal to theirs.
There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous …
More universal. More contagious. More dangerous.
Evil.
As I prepare to post this column I think of a young Jewish person I love whom I met just after October 7th who now keeps their keffiyeh at home, their opinions limited, their passions private, their family intact.
There are oh so many and I love them all. Together they stand for justice, for freedom, for liberation for all oppressed peoples.
I love them all.
Salamaat,
Robert
This was a well thought out and written piece. I appreciate that you are writing it from your lived experience. My father in law was born in Ramallah in 1924, and married in Beirut where my partner was born in 1955. My father in law vividly recalled the English occupation and oppression and then the subsequent militarization of the the Israeli people. A whole new set of oppression for the Arab community. They moved to New England in 1956 to escape the violence and constant repression of the Arab people living in a partitioned state. I am still, on a daily basis, appalled at the deaths of women and children, at least 60k by now. Israel IS becoming a pariah state and they are aided and abetted in their killing by the US and other allies. It is a shameful chapter in human history