According to Noam Chomsky, there are two kinds of terrorism. The terrorism of extremist organisations, wich we all find horrible, and the war crimes of the righteous, wich are not treatened like terrorism, because the righteous have the power to give the things another name they deserve.
US soldiers arresting the staff of the Fallujah Hospital. According to the convention of Geneva, all military actions committed by the occupation forces against medical civil installations are war crimes.
The world reacted shocked after the killer attack on Charlie Hebdo. In the New York Times, Steve Erlanger gave a graphic impression of the situation right after the attack. Many were talking about the French 9/11, a day ruled by sirenes, helicopters, panic news reports, police chains, crowds fulled with fear, kids picked up from school to keep them safe. Paris perished in a day of blood and horror.
A big yell of outrage was followed by a reflection on the backgrounds of these cruel attacks: “the reaction to this kind of horror and the disgust we feel toward this crime are legitimate, but to find out the roots of this evil act we must keep some principals in the back of our heads. ”
This reaction should not be related to what we feel and think about Charlie Hebdo. The passionate and everpresent tag #JeSuisCharlie does not express possible relations with Charlie Hebdo, especially not in the context of freedom of expression. #JeSuisCharlie should defend the freedom of expression, free from the contents of Charlie Hebdo, weither they are hateful and sexist, and the shouted slogans should also include a clear condemnation of violence.
Isaac Herzog, leader of the Israeli Labour Party and Netanyahu’s most important challenger in the upcoming elections in Israel, has the right oexpression wen he says “Terrorism is terrorism. Its not possible to react in two different ways”. He’s also right when he says that “all nations aiming for peace and liberty are confronted with a big challenge” – where I don’t take credit of his predictable selective interpretation of this “challenge”.
Media
Erlanger describing the horror scene, quoting one of the surviving journalists: “Everything crashed, there was no escape possible. Smoke everywhere, it was horrible. People were screaming, it was a nightmare. Another journalist talked about a big blast and everything getting dark.
The headquarter of the Serbian state TV network RTS, bombed by the NATO on april 23, 1999, killing 16 people, generally technical staff members (WikiMedia Commons)
Erlanger described the situation as “a scene of shattered glas. broken walls, twisted furniture, burned paint and emotional destruction, the scene gets more familiar as time passes”. In the explosion, at least ten people were meant to die instantly, twenty others are missing, probably burried under debris.
Like David Peterson (independent investigation journalist from Chicago) is reminding us, this quotes are not dated in 2015, they are found in the New York Times report dated on april 24, 1999, written by Erlanger. Only the report on the rocket attack launched by the NATO on the RTS TV headquarter in Belgrado made it on page 6 and did not provoque the same attention we have after the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, filling the first page of newspapers worldwide.
The justification for this smaller amount of attention by the media was commanded by the righteous: US military and NATO command defended the attack as an effort against Slobodan Milosević. In a official reaction, Kenneth Bacon, spokesman of the Pentagon, declared that the Serbian TV network was a part of the Serbian killing machine and therefore had to be eliminated.
In the aftermath the Yuguslav government pretended that the entire nation stands behind Milosević. Erlanger reacted he finds it not so clear how the government could be sure about this.
Such sarcastic remarks we find unacceptable when we read how France is mourning about the deaths and that the world is enraged after these cruelties. There has not even to be searched for the deeper roots, there is even no need to find out who’s standing for civilisation and who’s standing for barbarism.
Their Terrorism, Our Actions
So Isaac Hertog must be wrong when he claims that terrorism is terrorism and that there are no two different ways to react. There are two ways, hence the most extreme kind of terrorism, the terrorism comitted from the most righteous of the Earth, is not considered as terrorism, while the most righteous of the Earth have a free licence to kill. And then it is also true that it wasn’t an attack on freedom of expression, when the most righteous of the Earth are bombing a TV-station broadcoasting for the enemy state.
The same way we can understand the comment of Floyd Abrams, attorney for civil rights, in the New York Times. Who is known for his vigorous defense of freedom of expression. For him, the attack on Charlie Hebdo is “the most threatening attack on journalism in the ‘living memory’ (‘in living memory’, as far as mankind can remember,” since time has no memory). He is quite correct about that ‘living memory’. After all, this ‘memory’ places attacks on journalists and other acts of terrorism in its proper categories: the Others, which are horrible, opposite to the Ours, who are brave and can be wiped out easily from the “living memory”.
It is worth to remind that this was only one of many attacks of the righteous on the freedom of expression. Take another example of wiped out ‘living memory’: The attack on the general hospital in Fallujah by US forces in November 2004, wich was one of the worst crimes of the Iraq invasion.
Civilian casualties
American soldiers captivate staff and patients of the hospital in Fallujah in 2004 (theage.com.au)
The occupation of a hospital in itself is a serious war crime, even without taking into account the way it is performed. That occupation was described openly in an article on the front page of the New York Times, with pictures of the crime. The article reported:
“Patients and staff at the hospital were forced to go out of the rooms by armed soldiers and were ordered to sit or ly on the ground, with their hands tied on their backs .” These war crimes were described as highly commendable and justified:
“This offensive ended what military officials called a propaganda weapon of the insurgents: the main hospital in Fallujah with his continuing reports of civilian casualties.”
Obviously, we can not allow such a propaganda machine to continue vomiting vulgar obscenities like this.
Noam Chomsky, January 10, 2015