Understanding Terrorism in a Colonial World

(Photo by Dan Scavino via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

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On October 7, 2023, Hamas – a Palestinian militant group – launched a surprise attack against Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “the IDF [would] use all its strength to destroy Hamas,” and would turn Gaza to “rubble” in doing so. 

He blamed Hamas for starting a “brutal and evil war” that would not end until the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had cleared “the terrorists out…house by house”, restoring “control” across Palestine. 

Two years after Netanyahu’s statement, a UN Commission found that Israel’s war in Gaza constituted genocide. After Netanyahu’s military response to October 7th began, more than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 171,000 have been injured, and almost 2 million have been displaced. Three years later, Netanyahu’s justification for genocide remains the same: to defeat Hamas at all costs. 

However, Netanyahu’s original declaration of counter terrorism and self-defence has passed beyond the borders of Israel and Palestine. Regarding his government’s recent attacks against Iran, Netanyahu justified Israeli military action as an effort to “destroy [Iran’s] terror infrastructure.” He framed the “heroic” IDF as locked in battle against the ”thousands of terrorists” associated with Hezbollah – a militant proxy of Iran – said to be plotting the destruction of Israeli cities.

Regardless of destruction and disruption, seeking out the elusive terrorist seems to take precedence for the Israeli government. In this framing, the label ‘terrorist’ becomes a justification for any attack. 

Who is a Terrorist?

Pay close attention to the language Netanyahu chooses when discussing Hamas and Hezbollah. These are not just foreign militants, but specifically “terrorists” who “want to murder us all.” 

Netanyahu is deliberately constructing a specific character for his audience. The terrorist is “evil”, whose acts have “yet been devised by Satan”, hell-bent on destruction, and without any justification for violence.

For Netanyahu, there is a dividing morality here. One side is good, those who fight terrorists or “us,” as he suggests in his speech; and the other, evil, represented by Hamas and Hezbollah, who seek murder. 

The Issue with State Definitions of Terror

But who exactly is a terrorist? Pursuing this question does not mean ignoring appalling attacks carried out by people and groups across the globe to find justification. Rather, understanding this label – and how it is often selectively applied – reveals the dynamic of power central to modern colonial states.

Israel’s 2016 Counterterrorism Law provides a criterion. It suggests that an act “carried out with a political, religious, nationalistic, or ideological motive” or one intending to provoke “fear or panic among the public” constitutes terrorism. Additionally, any act that causes “serious harm to a person’s body or freedom”, property, religious objects, or infrastructure, can be classified as terrorism.

Israel’s own definition of terrorism is vague. It is no surprise that Netanyahu negates historical conflict between Israel and Palestine in his October 7th speeches. That he alludes to the idea that terrorism emerges out of a vacuum makes it easier to justify assaults against terror groups, distancing the Israeli government from any ties to historical oppression against others.

For when a nation has had so long a history of violent oppression by another, as Palestine has had at the hands of Israel, is the line between terrorist and terrorized really so clear?

The Global War on Terror

Netanyahu’s hypocrisy is not without precedent, however, and fits into a wider discourse surrounding global terrorism.

September 11th 2001, is a key moment. Four commercial Airlines were hijacked and intentionally crashed, killing nearly 3,000 people, with Al-Qaeda – a Jihadist militant network founded by Osama Bin Laden – claiming responsibility. 

9/11 signalled a ‘new’ threat in Western public perception, reported by mainstream media to have manifested in an ‘unprecedented’ scale of random terror and violence never before seen by the U.S. In the aftermath of the attack, then president George W. Bush declared a “Global War on Terror” against the “new and sudden national challenges” the U.S. now faced. He pledged that the war would go on “until every terrorist group…[had] been found, stopped and defeated.”   

Colonialism and Terrorism

9/11 was represented as something wholly new and different, and without cause. Much like Netanyahu on October 7th – labelled as “Israel’s 9/11” –  the U.S. took control of the historical record to deny and erase its own part in creating political violence. 

The U.S. already had a long history of violent intervention in the Middle East by September 11th. Ten years prior, the U.S. and the United Kingdom waged a disastrous conflict against Iraq, which plunged the country into a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis from which Iraq still struggles to recover. Iraq was subject to another period of bombing in 1998, marking a continued regime of U.S. terror in the region. 

In this sense, the use of aircraft to produce fear was not ‘unprecedented’ and began with the reaction to 9/11. First used by 20th-century European colonial powers to control the Middle East and North Africa, and again by the U.S. during the Gulf War, violence and fear as a means of control is a deeply rooted colonial concept.

Terrorizing again became a central part of American military operations, as is clear in the U.S. Army’s post 9/11 counterinsurgency field manual, which “draws upon colonial teachings and the U.S. Marines’ code of conduct for occupying Latin American Nations.” 

However, by alienating its own political violence, the U.S. can cast itself as a victim. Bush’s 9/11 narrative constructed the idea that terrorism was an attack against the “heart and soul of the civilised world” by the uncivilized. He frames terrorists and terrorism as uncivilized to disown the relationship between states and political violence.

A History of Spreading Fear

Colonial history is marred by conflicts between the ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’. The U.S. leverages its position as a large global power to control the narrative surrounding terrorism, and shifts perspectives on what violence is deemed acceptable.

The use of aircrafts to weaponize fear as a method of control is done so in the interest of ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ when the U.S. carries out strikes in the Gulf, and as such is seen as acceptable because the U.S. claims itself as spreading democracy. Yet, when the same thing is done by another group or nation, it is a marker of uncivility, barbarity, and evil.

Owing to its power to designate other groups as terrorists, the U.S. is then able to grant itself justification for invading and intervening in other countries. Historian John Grenier describes this as America’s “first way of war,” in which the U.S. legitimizes its own forms of extreme violence by first delegitimizing those who fight against them and their causes.

Not only is this colonial practice evident in the formation of the U.S., such as the genocide and forced removal of Indigenous Populations, labelled as uncivilized ‘savages’, but it is also evident as a systemic practice repeated as part of the Global War on Terror. Most notably, the use of torture and indefinite detention at sites such as Guantanamo Bay – a detention camp in Cuba – as a means of forced cooperation and control. 

By systematically ‘othering’ or casting an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ dynamic through exclusion, the U.S. rendered its own forms of violence as legitimate against whoever it considered a terrorist, because it had the power to do so. Whatever means that such terrorists could be defeated, controlled, or degraded, in this case through torture and other human rights abuses, was presented as irrelevant in the pursuit of eliminating evil.

Counterterrorism and Racial Profiling

However, the question of what constitutes terrorism remains. As there is no universally-agreed upon definition of what constitutes terrorism, powerful states like the U.S. and Israel can make those decisions themselves without adherence to any international standards. 

Not only has this excused states from justifying violence, or their chosen counterterrorism methods upon others – as the U.S. and Israel engage in large-scale torture as a means to control – but it has also allowed governments to heighten surveillance and profiling on their own citizens.

Activist Deepa Kumar has coined the term “terrorcraft” to describe how the process of ‘othering terrorists’ has emerged as a “project of racialisation.” Kumar explains that “brown men” in general, especially Arabs and Muslims, are predominantly targeted by state surveillance as they have come to “embody terrorism” despite the majority having no part in it. Kumar argues that state media has reinforced colonial perceptions of a fear of difference which intensified post 9/11. 

In line with this, Bush’s government passed the PATRIOT Act after 9/11, which enabled U.S. security agencies to expand the scope of their surveillance over the American population. These measures gave way to heightened racial profiling, as agencies required less tangible evidence to surveil, search or seize suspects. Muslim’s were disproportionately affected, with around 80,000 being called in for questioning and prevented from travel by no-fly lists.

This legacy is ongoing. Even as recently as 2017, then President Donald Trump signed an order which banned travel from certain Muslim countries to the U.S. for 90 days. The order was justified by Trump as a heightened security measure, arguing the ban was “not about religion” but rather “about terror and keeping our country safe.”

Israel has also increased state surveillance against potential terror threats. Since 2020, Israel has significantly heightened its surveillance over Palestinians to demonstrate the far reaches of the IDF. Through extensive CCTV monitoring and facial recognition technologies, Israel has no doubt cultivated an environment of terror among the people of Palestine who live with the reality of being surveilled at all times. 

An Ongoing Legacy of Oppression

The parallels between the U.S.’s Global War on Terror and Israel’s genocide in Palestine and attacks abroad are evident. Contemporary Israeli violence is rooted in the methods of Bush’s Global War on Terror, continuing the cycle of imperial control. Colonial legacies fundamentally dominate discussions surrounding terrorism.

The divide between states and terrorists is not as clear as mainstream media or governments suggest. There are intrinsic, historic relationships at play. Terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum, with no origin or reason. Rather, terrorism comes from cycles of violence that colonialism produces, and continues to produce through oppression and systematic political violence.

Israel’s counterterrorism will not be solved with continued oppression. But the current actions of the Israeli government make it clear that equitable solutions for the Palestinian people, or peaceful conflict resolutions, are not the goal. Control and occupation are. 

Edited by Atena Abbaspourbenis