Last week’s pager attack on Lebanon signalled the beginning of the Lebanon war. It exposed the hypocrisy behind Western denunciations of terrorism. The triggering of explosives in 5,000 pagers, irrespective of whether the target is Hezbollah, fits every definition of terrorism. It killed dozens of civilians, including children.
As Michael Walzer, author of “Just and Unjust Wars” and co-editor of “The Jewish Political Tradition” wrote in the New York Times,
the explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday were also very likely war crimes — terrorist attacks by a state that has consistently condemned terrorist attacks on its own citizens….
the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands of others, came when the operatives were not operating; they had not been mobilized and they were not militarily engaged. Rather, they were at home with their families, sitting in cafes, shopping in food markets — among civilians who were randomly killed and injured.
Terrorism is the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective……more
