أرشيف موقع العهد الإخباري من 1999-2018
ارشيف من : 2005-2008
I choose not to be on the side of the strong
Other does, not what we do. Earlier this year an American journal asked me to contribute an essay addressing the question of whether attacks against civilians could ever be justified. An American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native American in the past, for the Palestinian or Iraqi today, to ask himself. The powerful, whether Israel, America, Russia or China will always describe their victims` struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow genocide of the remaining Palestinians, the continued wars against the civilian population of southern Lebanon, the NATO bombing of Belgrade, the American occupation of Iraq and the thousands of civilians it has killed, these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians are the target. What is the air power used by militaries such as Israel, America or the Russians in Chechnya if not a tool of terror? What did we mean by Shock and Awe?
Normative rules are determined by power relations. The powerful side gets to determine what is legal and illegal. The powerful side besieges the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court produced them instead of an oppressor. This excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of the powerful in the eyes of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Not all causes are created equal, the Basques or Corsicans today cannot justify attacks on Spanish or French civilians the way Palestinians can. Attacking civilians is the most basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day. The Palestinian people are being eradicated day after day. As a result they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel, and they are above censure. Colonial powers use humans as weapons, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It is legitimate to attack those former civilians who turned themselves into strategic weapons to settle occupied land, be they American colonists or Jewish settlers. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic supported by an overwhelming power that is taking away their land and identity then everything is justified. Not all causes justify attacks on civilians. Some that did would be the Native Americans when confronted with colonialism, the Jews of Germany when they were being exterminated, African Americans when they were enslaved or segregated and today the preeminent exemplar is the Palestinian struggle for existence.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented the whites under siege with the Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so too have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60 year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. The mere act of being Israeli therefore is an act of dispossession, and of murder, particularly when there is universal military service to support the occupation and deny the Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. It is not that qua Palestinian they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not be bombing cafes if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits. They cannot use nuclear weapons.
There are also limits to this argument and it is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act of resistance to colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli or a Russian, if you are strong everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It`s merely a question of what side you choose. I choose not to be on the side of the strong, hence in the struggle of the weak for justice, or for existence, in the resistance movements of the Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Kurds and if they could the Tibetans and others like them everything is justifiable.
Nir Rosen
New America Foundation Fellow www.nirrosen.com