By Gilberto López y Rivas on November 12, 2023
photo: Al Mayadeen
The ongoing genocidal war of the Zionist State of Israel against Palestine has brought the concept of terrorism back into the political debate and, consequently, the need to appeal to the term global state terrorism to characterize the policy of violence perpetrated by state apparatuses against peoples and governments, with the purpose of instilling fear and social paralysis, thereby violating national and international law. The analysis of this phenomenon has emphasized individual and group action across the political spectrum, leaving aside the role of U.S. imperialism and neocolonial states, such as Israel, in the imposition of this political practice in which the State transgresses the frameworks of “legal” repression and resorts to extensive and intensive extrajudicial methods to annihilate the resistance of peoples.
It was colleague A. Grachiov, in his book Under the Sign of Terror (Moscow: Editorial Progreso, 1986), who for the first time refers to how the United States elevated terrorism to the rank of State policy, pointing to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as the agency in charge of organizing subversive and sabotage operations against other countries, attacking foreign statesmen, misinforming and spreading slander, fulfilling the function of professional terrorists at the service of the White House. To the secret operations of direct responsibility of the CIA, we should add its close cooperation with armies and intelligence services of dictatorial and “democratic” regimes, so that the United States is tacitly complicit in the terrorist practices of other states, this role being very visible in the current Israeli war against Palestine.
Precisely, 50 years after the coup d’état against President Allende, and knowing the interference of the U.S. government, we ratify this concept in the current international arena. Let us recall the coordination of the CIA in the hunt, detention in clandestine prisons, torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of thousands of opponents of the Southern Cone through Plan Condor, in the 1970s and 1980s, in a covert extraterritorial action that we can only characterize as “terrorism”, even if we take the definition of the Federal Bureau of Investigation itself as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce governments, the civilian population or a segment thereof, in pursuit of social or political objectives”.
Today, it is not only the CIA that is charged with bringing terror wherever U.S. interests are perceived to be at risk. The Democrat Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize winner, doubled, with respect to his Republican predecessor, the number of countries with Special Forces covert operations, while increasing the use of drones for executions of alleged terrorists, with the proven “collateral damage” of unarmed civilians or non-combatants, including a large number of women, elderly and infants.
Juan Avilés Farré asks: “Is it possible and necessary to define terrorism?”, and clarifies that: “A State can commit crimes, even very serious crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, through its official apparatus, but such crimes would only fall into the category of terrorism if they are committed by clandestine agents”. The problem is that the boundaries between the actions of a state’s covert apparatuses intersect with the operations of military forces also acting in stealth, so that, regardless of whether they carry out violence against armed opponents or non-combatants, they can be classified in this category, as well as being considered war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The resignation of Craig Mokhiber, director of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is an expression of the gravity of Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories. He notes witnessing a “textbook genocide” that the UN seems powerless to stop, while “the US, the UK and much of Europe are fully complicit in this horrific assault…We will all be held accountable for our position at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.”
In sum, the current forms of neoliberal globalization tend to exacerbate the contradictions of capitalism, leaving aside all mediation. The rupture of the international legal order is a distinctive feature of this new stage. The most terrible enemy of peace and of the very survival of the human species is capitalism. Capitalism is powerful, but not invincible, and no matter how violent the policies of the State may be, they have never been able to stop the revolutionary efforts of the peoples.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English