The media tells you who is blameless and who is a terrorist, and how to tell the good guys from the bad guys. But the world is still arguing about how to define terrorism
The Terror of War, clicked by Nick Ut, won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and remains an iconic reminder of the horrors of war
The nine-year-old child, Kim Phuc, was naked, terrified and running for her life from a deadly tidal wave of orange fire and black smoke. Moments earlier, a South Vietnamese Air Force plane had dropped a new incendiary explosive called a napalm bomb on her village of Trang Bang, suspected by the United States of being a Viet Cong stronghold.
Kim Phuc was terrified. She had escaped incineration by ripping the burning clothes off her body but the intense heat had seared the skin off her arm and back, leaving bare singed flesh. Kim Phuc’s mouth was wide open in a primal scream.
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The photo, clicked by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, was called The Terror of War. It went on to win the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and remains an iconic reminder of the horrors of war.
Whenever I read the word terrorist, I think of the child in that photo. If you’ve ever wondered what terror looks like, Kim Phuc’s face
is the answer.
It’s 2023, a full half-century later, and that word is in the air everywhere, this time to describe Hamas, whose blitzkrieg of Israel re-ignited simmering fires and precipitated a violent, brutal, no-holds-barred war with Israel and with no end in sight. Each is promising to wipe the other out.
The headlines tell me that I am to think of Hamas as the bad guys and Israel as the innocent victims. Hamas is apparently a designated terrorist organisation; even if they just pick their nose it counts as terrorism.
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Hamas terrorists reveal a coordinated attack plan. . . [NBC News]
The dastardly terrorist attacks perpetrated against innocent Israeli civilians by terror group Hamas. . . [CBS News]
There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand in solidarity with. . . [Reuters]
But several venerable networks such as the BBC trod carefully, calling Hamas militants but avoiding the T-word.
John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, put out an explanation: “Terrorism is a loaded word which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. . . We don’t take sides, we don’t use loaded words like evil or cowardly, we don’t talk about terrorists.”
As usual, we have questions. Who decides what terrorism is? If someone invaded your home and made you a refugee, could you call them terrorists?
Palestine existed centuries before 1948, when a clique of western powers led by the British decided to carve a Jewish state out of Palestine and call it Israel. Jews loved the idea, Arabs rejected it and the partition was pushed through anyway. Meanwhile, the British, fresh from creating Pakistan out of India just a year earlier and sowing the seeds for a bloody, fractious future there, retreated to their island singing It wasn’t me.
Over 700,000 Palestinians instantly became refugees in what had once been their homeland. The area has not seen peace since then. Israelis and Palestinians die all the time, each killed by the other side. To a Palestinian, Israel is the real terrorist who started it all.
The world has not yet agreed on a single definition of terrorism. Brian Jenkins, terrorism expert, says that “the threat of violence, individual acts of violence or a campaign of violence designed primarily to instil fear is terrorism”. Yonah Alexander, of the International Center for Terrorism Studies says it is “the use of violence against random civilian targets to intimidate or to create generalised pervasive fear for the purpose of achieving political goals”.
The United Nations hasn’t classified Hamas as a terrorist organisation; neither have most other countries. However, the USA, the UK, Canada and the EU have designated Hamas as terrorists and Israel as a victim, and I’m guessing that’s where you get your news.
When Hamas attacks a kibbutz and takes Jewish hostages, that’s terror according to CNN. However, when a US drone accidentally wipes out a whole wedding party in Pakistan, that’s just collateral damage. Shrug.
What would the Vietnamese child who survived napalm say?
Napalm, brewed by some Harvard scientists in a bathtub by mixing gasoline, benzene and polystyrene, is a monstrous, malevolent explosive that creates a searing jellified gasoline that touches 2,750°C and clings to the skin, melting flesh to the bone. The USA used it in World War II to wipe out 64 Japanese cities, killing more people than the atomic bombs. In the My Lai massacre, the USA used napalm to murder hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians.
No one thought Kim Phuc would survive. But after 14 months and 17 surgical procedures, she returned home. It was 10 years before she could walk again. In 1992, she was granted political asylum in Canada, where she lives with her husband and children.
The napalm bombing of Trang Bang that Kim Phuc survived checks all the boxes.
It was an act of violence with random, civilian targets.
It created blood-curdling terror and damaged families for generations.
It was a campaign planned by an international state player to achieve political goals.
Perhaps one day someone will tell me why the USA is not called a state sponsor of terrorism.
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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