The Good Terrorist by Sherri Mandell
Jerusalem Post, November 13, 2001
Six months ago, on May 8, Palestinian terrorists slaughtered our son
Koby, 13, and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran, 14. The two boys, who played hooky
from 8th grade to go hiking in a dry riverbed a half a kilometer from
our home in Israel, were found with their heads crushed and bodies mutilated
beyond recognition. The killers dipped their hands into the boys' blood
and smeared it on the walls of the cave where the boys were found.
Koby was both an American and an Israeli citizen. He loved Cal Ripken,
Michael Jordan, making chocolate milk shakes for the whole family and
studying the logic of the Talmud. He was almost finished with 8th grade,
and had just started to care about the way he looked. He was kind and
athletic and funny, and he was smart, smart enough to understand the way
that language affects perception. What we call or name an action often
determines how we perceive it.
In a stunning and painful development, many American newspapers, including
The New York Times and The Washington Post, have bought the Palestinian
propaganda line that murderers who kill innocent Israelis like Koby are
not terrorists trying to instill fear and demoralize a civilian population,
but rather "militants" who are engaged in a campaign of warfare
against a repressive government.
According to this line of reasoning, our son and other children like him
are killed not by terrorists - but by Palestinian "militants."
Militants are engaged in combat, in military action, ready to give up
their lives to attack the enemy.
According to this line of reasoning, our son and other children like him
were killed not by cowardly and immoral terrorists - but by brave and
honorable Palestinian militants.
Militants are soldiers engaged in war, even if the people they are fighting
aren't old enough to shave. Calling Palestinian terrorists militants justifies
the actions of people like Sheikh Yassin of Hamas and Marwan Barghouti
of the Tanzim who eagerly send Palestinians to die "nobly" for
their cause, targeting Israeli children, like the 14- and 16-year-olds
killed last week in Jerusalem. The two were on the way home from school.
They were riding a public bus filled with other high school students when
a terrorist opened fire with an M16. The shooter killed the two teenagers
and wounded 50 others.
On the day of the shooting, the headlines in The New York Times and elsewhere
reported that the attack had been perpetrated by Palestinian militants.
In the morning, those militants had been transformed into gunmen - an
even more offensive term, with its old-fashioned atmosphere and vapid
neutrality. The word is blameless, a description rather than a definition.
A man with a gun, engaged in illegal activity. Illegal, but not necessarily
immoral.
What has happened to the word terrorist - inflicting terror, horror, pain
to create overwhelming fear? Why are these men called by innocuous labels
when their goal is to kill and maim as many innocent people as they can?
And what about terrorism - a system of inflicting terror on a particular
population? Why has that word suddenly been excised from the political
rhetoric about Palestinians?
Let us not excuse leaders who extol death by suicide bombing or who encourage
their people to spray bullets into a crowd of innocent children on their
way home from school. And let us not mistake terrorism as a random event
rather than as a institutionalized system of intimidation.
Palestinian leaders consciously inculcate the culture of terrorism in
their society. That's one reason why polls indicate that more than 75%
of the population favor suicide bombings. That's why on the evening of
September 11, Palestinians were dancing in the street, celebrating because
nearly 6,000 people had been struck down by a "militant" plot
on American soil. That's why Palestinians accord rock star status to suicide
bombers who die a "martyr's" death. It's a message that legitimizes
terrorists like the one who blew up the Sbarro pizza parlor, killing our
friend Frimet Roth's 15-year-old daughter, Malky, a flute player and poet.
The Palestinians celebrated the Sbarro bombing by opening an exhibition
at an Islamic university, where there was a cardboard cutout of the Sbarro
storefront, and fake blood spilled onto the ground. This is how the Palestinian
students learn to glorify the systematized "martyrdom" of good
"militants."
Make no mistake about it. Our son Koby was killed by terrorists. We beg
you, do not whitewash that fact. Do not justify our son's murder.
And do not jeopardize America's moral fight against terrorism by calling
the Palestinians who killed Koby, Yosef, and the others resistance fighters,
instead of calling them what they are: cruel, callous, child-killing terrorists
with blood on their hands and hate seared into their hearts.