While Orwell is still fresh in my mind, I think I will attack an overused and meaningless phrase which offends me as much as any cliche can: One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Besides its triteness, what I dislike about this phrase is that it assumes the term "terrorist" is subjective instead of being a specific word that describes people who do specific actions. In his book Fighting Terrorism, Benjamin Netanyahu defines terrorism this way: "Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic assault on civilians to inspire fear for political ends" (p. eight). The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter then is intent and victim. The only possible similarity is the end goal. Many wars of independence have included both freedom fighters and terrorists (the Free French during WWII, Israel, Ireland just to name a few), and lumping the two groups together does a great disservice to legitimate revolutionaries.

The intended goal of terrorists is fear. Because they do not believe they can achieve their desired outcome, whatever it may be, through conventional means of either war or law, they hope to scare people into giving them what they want. For example, Timothy McVeigh did not think he could change the American government through conventional war or legislation, so he frightened all of the country by killing innocent people in a federal building. On the Israel/Gaza border today rockets fall on Jewish communities with regularity, not so much in the hopes of killing people, as in the hopes of inducing fear. The same desire to frighten can be seen in southern Thailand where Muslims have killed a few hundred Buddhists, mostly farmers, but driven away thousands more from their homes.

While losing these lives is tragic, why does it cause so much fear? The number of victims in Oklahoma City, the Israel/Gaza border, and Thailand do not reach a level to cause a government to surrender. What is so scary is who the victims are: civil servants and their children in a daycare center, average people sleeping in their beds, and simple farmers trying to feed their families. None of these people signed up to fight a war. None of these innocent people wore a uniform. None of these civilians expected to die violent deaths by simply going about their day. It is this targeting of people unassociated with the terrorists' grievances, real or imagined, that terrorizes people. As Bernard Lewis puts it in The Crisis of Islam "the slaughter of innocent and uninvolved civilians is not 'collateral damage.' It is the prime objective" (147).

In his address to Congress shortly after the attacks of 9/11, Netanyahu explained that "Terrorism is defined neither by the identity of its perpetrators nor by the cause they espouse. Rather it is defined by the nature of the act" (Terrorism xxi). This seems to be the point on which many people confuse freedom fighters and terrorists. The cause should be separated from the act. The American government is seriously flawed, but a fertilizer bomb that kills 168 innocent people is reprehensible. Many people legitimately sympathize with Palestinians living in stateless limbo; however, this should not lead to sympathy with suicide bombers blowing up Jewish school buses. Perhaps Muslims in southern Thailand have been persecuted, but that does not justify beheading Buddhist farmers. To quote Netanyahu one last time: "some acts are evil in and of themselves, and do not deserve any consideration or 'understanding'" (Terrorism xxi).

Lewis, Bernard. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. New York, Modern, 2003.

Netanyahu, Benjamin. Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terror Network. New York: Farrar, 2001.