Hamas, the United States, and Terrorism

I've seen many CAIR officials stumble on this question. I understand why and what the motivation is. As Ibrahim Hooper said, CAIR is not going to try to pass a pro-Israel litmus test. It shouldn't have to.

The motivation behind the question

When FOX News or Joe Kaufman or some other right wing, pro Israel proponent asks Muslims or Arabs or anyone who is for the freedom and self determination of Palestinians that question, the motivation is to destroy any element of justified Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, murder, and brutality.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and all the other groups that use violence against Israel are all labeled anti-Semetic, and pursuing the destruction of Israel.

Now, does CAIR support Hamas and all these other groups? More precisely, does CAIR support everything these groups do? Such as killing innocent people, etc? Of course not. That's why CAIR condemns suicide bombings, rocket attacks, etc. The Messenger of God was clear on such issues - Muslims are forbidden to kill people who are not engaged in battle, especially women and children and the elderly.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and other national liberation movements use every means at their disposal to fight occupation or oppression. It's wrong to kill innocent people. It's wrong to fire rockets indiscriminately at towns and villages. But that does not mean because they commit such actions that Hamas and Hezbollah are completely and utterly devout terrorist organizations, as the mainstream press here in the US likes to label them.

Both organizations are deeply involved in the political processes of their respective nations. Both provide immense social services to their communities. Both have a long history of fighting and speaking out against Israeli occupation and violence. none of this is reported in the mainstream US press.

This is precisely why they are labeled in the US press as terrorist. Anyone who opposes US hegemony is a terrorist. Castro, Chavez, Ahmedinajad, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. That's the whole troop right there, pretty much. If you agree with anything one of these entities say then you are by the media's definitions a terrorist sympathizer. If you denounce them then you are classified as a "moderate." This is how the game has worked for a long time.

The Terrorism of Current World Powers

What does our nation do? What does Israel do? By our own definitions of terrorism - "The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological" (US Defense Department definition) - the US is a terrorist state.

Take the Iraq War. The US is a member of the UN. We adopted the UN Charter. By our Constitution we are obligated to follow the rules and regulations of the Charter. By the UN definition, the Iraq War was illegal. The UN did not sanction the war and by our own law, the US was waging an illegal war based not just upon the UN Charter, but also the US Constitution. Therefore we were involved in an illegal war using "unlawful violence" not just intimidating the Iraqi government and society, but the world generally. Oh, and we had goals of course - to topple the Iraqi regime ruling the country (this was the second reason provided by the Bush administration for illegally invading Iraq once no WMDs were found). That's a political motivation that falls under the DOD definition.

What about Israel? Their list of crimes against humanity are so lengthy it's not even worth discussing, really. But I will just mention a few terrorist actions Israel has taken up in the past few years, such as bombing Gaza's main electrical plant causing severe damage to a population already facing a humanitarian crisis due to Israel's illegal occupation (yes, they are still the occupying force of Gaza despite its attempt to drop responsibility of Gaza by "pulling out" in 2005). The West Bank has fared just as bad. Recently, Israeli soldiers demolished a Palestinian village between the Green Line and the Israeli wall or separation barrier in order to clear out unwanted Palestinian residents who were selfishly living on the land of their ancestors and not allowing the Israelis to steal their land.

Yes, those are the stalwarts of democracy and freedom. If we followed our own definitions of terrorism then Bush and Co. would have been jailed with the key flushed down the toilet a long time ago and their sympathizers would be indicted as "co-conspirators."