Israel is believed by some observers to be committing outright terrorism, at least in accordance with the description given by every Dictionary in the world.
At least 44 Palestinians, including 16 children, were killed during Israel’s most recent military offensive on the Gaza Strip, code-named Operation Breaking Dawn, which took place in early August over three days. The Israeli government claims that the strike was a “preemptive” action against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. This justification is as ingenious as any for randomly attacking civilians.
Israel’s sanguinary dawn-breaking in Gaza resulted in the death of exactly zero Israelis, a stark disparity in losses that is standard practice in the Zionist state’s interactions with the beleaguered Palestinian coastal enclave. Breaking Dawn was the deadliest episode since the 11-day Israeli attack in May 2021, honorably named Operation Guardian of the Walls, which killed more than 260 Palestinians, including 67 children.
While lethal and nonlethal forms of Israeli military torture have continued to be the routines of daily life in Gaza even after Israel’s alleged “withdrawal” from the territory in 2005, Breaking Dawn was the most horrific incident.
Earlier in the chronology is Operation Protective Edge, during which the Israeli force killed 2,251 individuals in Gaza, including 551 children. In contrast, almost 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day Operation Cast Lead, the great proportion of them were civilians and 300 of whom were children. Cast Lead resulted in the deaths of three Israeli citizens.
Backtrack a little to the romantic allure of Operation Summer Rains, which started in June 2006 and led to Operation Autumn Clouds, which was as poetic.
Israel; A Seven-Decade History
The “most violent attack on Gaza since 1967,” according to US scholar Noam Chomsky and Israeli scholar Ilan Pappé, was Summer Rains, with the “organized massacre” eventually taking on the appearance of “casual killing, when the ongoing usage of massive power is done as daily routine and not as the execution of a policy.”
Of course, if terrorism is the state’s policy, then carrying it out through apparent mindless systematic killing is one option.
Terrorism is defined as “(threats of) violent action for political goals” in the online edition of the Oxford Dictionary. And indeed, this has very much been the name of Israel’s strategy since it brutally formed itself on Palestinian territory in 1948 — an event that included massacring more than 10,000 Palestinian civilians, displacing three-quarters of a million more, and demolishing some 500 Palestinian communities.
Since that time, politically driven violence and the fear of it have continued to be the rule of the day—or, if you prefer, the dawning dawn. However, Israel’s Palestinian captives are instead the ones demonized as “terrorists” due to a US-backed Israeli stranglehold on the regional discourse and an all-out attack on reason.
US President Joe Biden stated in response to this month’s bloodbath in Gaza that he “supports Israel’s security, including its right to guard itself against attack.” This is neither surprising coming from a man who recently vehemently identified as a “Zionist” nor a departure from the worn-out rhetoric of the US establishment, which maintains that Israel is always and unquestionably acting in self-defense.
Whatever name it goes by—Operation Summer Rains, Whipping Wind, or Scampering Goat—terrorism is still terrorism. And when Israel continues to institutionalize “systematic massacre” and normalize terrorism, criticizing the government should also be considered acceptable.
