Palestinian Terrorism Research Articles

‘David vs Goliath’: Australian Jewish Perceptions of Media Bias in Reporting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This article seeks to show how the notion of ‘media bias’ has functioned in much Jewish discomfort and anger with how the second, or Al Aqsa, intifada has been represented by mainstream Australian and global media. My objective is not to demonstrate that this reporting in general favours one side of this conflict over the other, nor that there is an unproblematic position of balance which could be attained. Rather, I utilise the concept of media frames to problematise responses by Jewish and other audiences regarding Palestinians being represented by the media sympathetically as the ‘underdog’, and accusations of media bias against Israel. I examine the work that the metaphor ‘David versus Goliath’ has accomplished over the longer period of the Arab–Israeli conflict and how it has framed the conflict for both media and audiences. Finally, I draw on Judith Butler's writing on ‘explanation and exoneration’ in relation to what could be spoken of, and heard, by Americans in the September 11 attacks, to suggest that a similar discourse exists in relation to how Israeli and Palestinian violence can be spoken of from the perspective of Israel. I argue that the accusations of media bias against Israel circulate around a sense that the Israeli and Jewish narrative has been to some extent decentred by sections of the international media and other bodies.

Applying Lessons from Medical Management of Conventional Terror to Responding to Weapons of Mass Destruction Terror: The Experience of a Tertiary University Hospital

This article aims to summarize the accumulating experience of Hadassah University Hospitals in Jerusalem, Israel with ongoing terror attacks. The authors review their ongoing documented data from the first two years of the last wave of Palestinian terror attacks. Injury patterns and epidemiology of 1,916 terror victims are analyzed. The main finding is that terror is associated with significantly more severe and resource-demanding injuries than other forms of trauma. Main lessons and con­clusions from managing this terror wave are presented. The authors believe that preparedness and application of lessons learned from conventional terror will enhance the durability of society against terror associated with weapons of mass destruction.­

The causes of vigilante political violence: The case of Jewish settlers

On Friday morning. 27 February 1994, 29 Palestinian worshipers werekilled and more than 100 were wounded in Hebron after they were attackedby Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, who eame from the nearby settlementof Kiryat-Arba. This event was without doubt one of the most devastatingacts of violence ever perpetrated by Jewish settlers, but it was merely asingle event in a long period of continuous brutal violenee betweenPalestinian Arabs and Jewish settlers in the territories of Judea, Samaria (theWest Bank) and the Gaza Strip. Israeli police investigated more than 1,130cases of settler violence during the five years prior to the Hebron massaere.Furthermore, between 1987 and 2002, more then 120 Palestinian citizenswere killed as a result of settler violence. However, the violence was notunilateral; in the same period, 459 Israelis were killed by non-organized aetsof Palestinian violence in the territories.'This contribution examines the main factors contributing to settlerviolence in the territories by using the conceptual framework of vigilanteviolence.First, we address the concept of vigilantism in order to employ it as atheoretieal framework which will help determine the main catalysts ofJewish settler political violence.Second, we will investigate the development of Jewish political violencein Israel and especially in the territories by evaluating the relevant historicaland political factors.Subsequently, we will incorporate major examples of settler vigilantisminto our model of vigilante violenee in order to analyze and improve ourunderstanding of settler political violence.Finally, we will try to assess future tendencies in the relationshipbetween Jews and Arabs in the territories.

"One Size Fits All": Israel, Intelligence, and the al-Aqsa Intifada

While the world remains familiar with the ever present visual images of the ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians, relatively little attention has been paid to the manner in which intelligence has been used by Israel in its attempts to curb what it regards as Palestinian terrorism. This article looks at the way in which tactical or operational intelligence has come to be used by both the Israel Defence Forces and the political leadership to inform strategic choice, a position that favors a military rather than political solution to the ongoing violence. It examines closely the reasons for the emergence of this "attitudinal prism" and concludes with a prescriptive call for the hitherto moribund National Security Council to be put on a statutory civilian footing if more balanced and coherent assessments regarding the nature and scope of Palestinian violence are to be reached.

The IRA's foreign links

On 28 July, a Bogotá court will resume the trial of three suspected operatives of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on charges of training Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas in their campaign against the government. Combined with speculation about the provision of assistance to Palestinian terrorist groups, the trial has raised questions about the full extent of the IRA's international activities. Moreover, there are concerns about what such activities might signify for the future of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Indeed, in extending its international links, the IRA appears to be motivated primarily by the need to secure funding and maintain its capabilities - objectives informed by the assumption that it needs to prepare for a possible return to violence.

Altruism and fatalism: the characteristics of palestinian suicide terrorists

Over the last decade, the suicide method became one of the most prevalent tactics of Palestinian Terrorism in Israel. Who are these people, willing to sacrifice their lives in such an act, and what drives them to do such things? In our present analysis, we answer these questions, while relying on the concepts of altruistic and fatalistic suicide from Durkheim's typology of suicide behavior. Based on a newly established database compiled for this purpose m which includes information based on suicide, as well as non-suicide--Palestinian suicide terrorists from 1993 until the beginning of 2002, fit the "altruistic" type as well as some elements from the "fatalistic" and represent a combination of both types; thus they can be labeled under a new category of "fatalistic altruistic" suicide.

Palestinian religious terrorism: Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Highlights include: brief history ideology objectives organizational tructure areas of operation headquarters tactics and capabilities targets timeline appendices bibliography.

Targeting terror: U.S. policy toward Middle Eastern state sponsors and terrorist organizations, post-September 11

September 11 produced unprecedented political will in the United States to fight terrorism with all of the energy and power at the collective disposal of America and its allies. That principle has already been applied to al-Qaeda and is now being applied to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But what effect has the US-led war on terror had on the leaders and state sponsors of other Middle Eastern terrorist organizations? Here, Michael Levitt provides an assessment of US counter-terrorism policy during 2002 and argues that, without marshalling the resolve and resources to fight terror on all its fronts simultaneously, the West will not fully come to grips with the implications of September 11. The book begins with an overview of the war's impact on counter-terrorism documents produced since the attacks, then focuses on the activities of Palestinian terrorist groups, the escalating roles played by Syria and Iran, and the facilitation of terrorism by entities that are not included on the US State Department's sponsors of terrorism list. Levitt argues that to effectively combat terrorism, neither the United States nor its allies can be satisfied with battling only al-Qaeda, or any other specific terrorist group or collection of groups. The war on terror must target terrorism as a means, and all organizations that employ it or facilitate its use.

If Not Combatants, Certainly Not Civilians

Stein and I see targeted killing in fundamentally different ways. Stein sees the Palestinian terrorists as civilian noncombatants who are not engaged in war or even armed conflict with Israel. As such, there is no legal or moral right to target them. I see targeted killing as an appropriate response to an intolerable threat. Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself against armed Palestinians who seek to kill as many innocent Israeli civilians as possible. So long as the Palestinian Authority is incapable or unwilling to halt terrorist attacks, most interpretations of international law, Israeli law, and just war tradition support Israel's efforts to stop these murderous attacks before they can be carried out.

Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing

Since the beginning of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, Israel has pursued a policy in which alleged Palestinian terrorists have been hunted down and killed by government order. The policy is not one of assassination and is consistent with international law because Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, those targeted are usually killed by conventional military means, not through deception, and the targets of the attacks are not civilians but combatants or are part of a military chain of command. Targeted killing has also been affirmed by Israel's High Court.Although targeted killing has been pursued by Israel throughout its history, the scale of the present effort and the use of sophisticated military assets such as helicopter gunships and jet fighters set it apart from earlier practices. The effectiveness of the policy is called into doubt because it has not prevented–and may have contributed to–record numbers of Israeli civilians being killed. The policy has also resulted in informers being revealed, intelligence resources diverted, potential negotiating partners eliminated. It has also produced murderous retaliation and international condemnation of Israel. Benefits of the policy include impeding the effectiveness of terrorist operations, keeping terrorists on the run, and deterring some attacks. In addition, it affords the Israeli public a sense of revenge and retribution.Because it targets the actual perpetrators of terrorism, targeted killing provides a proportionate and discriminate response to the threat Israel faces. Improving the policy will require better civilian oversight, greater care to eliminate harm to innocent bystanders, and refraining from killing political leaders. Despite its many shortcomings, Israel is justified in pursuing this policy so long as it faces a terrorist threat that the Palestinian Authority will not or cannot control.

Warfare by other means: special forces, terrorism and grand strategy

This contribution looks at the role of Special Forces in anti-terrorist operations with particular emphasis on the British Special Air Service. It argues that Special Forces have played a pivotal role in such operations since the era of Palestinian terrorism in the early 1970s. The essay looks at the operations in Afghanistan leading to the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and shows that the seven Special Forces involved there proved crucial to the success of the limited ground forces. In particular they served a valuable force multiplier by acting as a nexus between the regional warlords and the use of air power as well as mobile strike units against fortified Al Qaeda and Taliban positions. In the latter instance their success was mixed, involving attacks on difficult cave hideouts, though overall it can be concluded that Special Forces have demonstrated their capacity in fighting unconventional warfare against mobile and transnational terrorist groupings.

?Jewish Ethics? as an Argument in the Public Debate Over the Israeli Reaction to Palestinian Terror

S INCE THE BAR KOKHBA REVOLT (I32-135 C.E.) and eradication of any trace of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, Jews have given little thought to questions of war. The long exile freed them from poignant moral dilemmas confronted by any polity that is compelled to use force to defend itself. Warfare, which has played such an essential role in world history, was seen by Jews as the craft of Esau-that is, a matter for gentiles-at least until such time as Messiah would come. Two generations ago, Rav Kook, greatest religious Zionist thinker, voiced view that exile had been a crucible, a necessary phase to prepare Jewish people for messianic redemption. The people of Israel, he argued, had abandoned sphere of world politics under duress that was partly also a matter of inner will, until happy time when a polity could be governed without wickedness or barbarism.' Zionism-namely movement to establish Jewish sovereignty and a Jewish military force-thus posed moral dilemmas for Jews that, for many generations, they had not had to confront. The Zionists had to devise new norms for use of force, but they did not begin with a clean slate. Zionist thought and literature were shaped by historical experience of Jews in modernity as much as by conscious or unconscious influence of Jewish tradition. Though Jewish tradition is not pacifist, there is no doubt that, during long exile, it had developed powerful bulwarks against blood shedding. I have especially in mind influence of prophetic literature and of halakhic legislation, both of which stressed sanctity of human life and strict prohibition against shedding blood of innocent people.

Science and war. The conflict in the Middle East has started a discussion in academic circles about the responsibility of scientists in times of political turmoil.

‘The intifada reaches the ivory tower’, proclaimed the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz in its May 15 issue. Indeed it has. The shockwaves from Palestinian suicide bombings and Israel's war against terrorism in the West Bank territory are reverberating through scientific and educational organisations around the world. The trigger for the headline was an open letter, published on April 6 in the British daily newspaper The Guardian and signed by more than 130 scientists from Europe and Israel. It called for a moratorium on further European cooperation with Israeli scientific and cultural institutions ‘until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians […].’ The letter created a flurry of further petitions for and against a boycott as well as articles and editorials in European and Israeli newspapers. The waves of the debate finally reached the secluded shores of various science islands in Europe and the scientific journals at the beginning of May, when Nature devoted its editorial to the topic. The journal has since published correspondence both for and against an academic boycott. The scientists calling for a boycott are dismayed with Israel's incursions into the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinian population. They think that the political community, particularly the US government and the EU, is not doing enough to restrain either side from further escalating the spiral of violence and thus call for additional pressure on the Israeli government. ‘We view the situation as in the case of the South African boycott,’ explained Steven Rose, a neurobiologist and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at the Open University in the UK, and the initiator of the open letter. ‘I feel that the civil society has to stand up and do something about it. […] There are ways in which we …

Editorial: Destruction and Desecration of Sacred Sites during Wars and Conflicts: A Neglected Travesty

In April 2002, about 250 Palestinian civilians, policemen, gunmen, and some foreign activists, in order to escape expected Israeli army attacks against them, took refuge inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a city of about thirty thousand. The church is perhaps the most sacred and revered site in all of Christendom, as it is there, ac cording to most Christians, that Jesus was born. Millions of Christians from all over the world visit the site annually. The Israeli incursion into Bethlehem and other cities and villages in occupied territories in Israel was in response to a series of Palestinian terrorist attacks or suicide bombings that killed and wounded scores of Israeli civilians. Of the Palestinians who entered the church, some were armed; some were civilians simply searching for a safe place to hide. Israeli tanks surrounded the area, creating a closed military zone, and the standoff lasted for thirty-eight days. During the siege, Israeli snipers shot several people within the church area, including an Armenian monk, two Palestinian policemen, and a mentally disabled church bell ringer. Most of those inside either escaped or were released. Thirteen gunmen, however, whom Israel described as known terrorists, were by agreement deported to other countries after the siege was concluded, to be dealt with under international law for whatever crimes they are found to have committed, both before and during the siege. As one of the world's most sacred sites, the Church of the Nativity fortunately escaped serious damage during the siege. There was a fire that caused light damage, some rooms inside the church were riddled with bullet holes, and the wear and tear the church suffered from so many people living there for more than five weeks was obvious. But the church, fortunately, was spared serious damage or destruction. But it could have been much worse.

The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond (review)

Reviewed by: The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991–96 and Beyond Fred H. Lawson The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991–96 and Beyond, by Helena Cobban. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999. 235 pp. $19.95. Just how difficult it is to present an even-handed account of negotiations involving Israel and Syria to an American audience is evident in the very first paragraph of the foreword to this book, penned by the president of the United States Institute of Peace, Richard H. Solomon. Solomon attributes the collapse of almost five years of formal talks between the Israeli and Syrian governments to two factors: “a spate of Palestinian terrorist bombings and pressure on then-prime minister Shimon Peres from his own Labor Party” (p. ix). This assertion is hard to square with Helena Cobban’s authoritative and nuanced analysis. Skip the foreword and proceed immediately to the main body of the text. You will be rewarded with a meticulous study of the origins, course, and eventual derailment of Israeli-Syrian negotiations during the 1990s that is almost impossible to put down. I read it in one sitting. Cobban demonstrates that the series of meetings that took place between Israeli and Syrian representatives beginning in October 1991 accomplished a good deal more than one might think. Most important, the talks confirmed that the government in Damascus is serious about hammering out a permanent peace with Israel. President Hafiz al-Asad may have been uncharacteristically ebullient following his January 1995 summit with President Bill Clinton in Geneva, when he announced that the Syrian people “wanted the peace of the brave, a real peace that thrives, continues, guarantees the interests of all, and gives rights to their owners” (p. 61), but he was clearly not dissembling. Fur thermore, the talks indicate that there is considerable congruence between fundamental [End Page 143] Israeli and Syrian strategic objectives: as early as the summer of 1993, Cobban observes, “the structure proposed by the Syrians [concerning the final disposition of the Golan] appealed to the obsession with security matters that Rabin and Asad both shared. It thus provided a durable template for their negotiations and continued to be used by the two sides for the rest of Rabin’s life” (p. 53). There was even a surprising degree of consensus between Yitzhak Rabin and Hafiz al-Asad regarding how the talks should proceed: both leaders were convinced of the benefits of “the creative use of ambiguity,” “a resort to extreme secrecy,” and “a very slow and carefully modulated pace” (pp. 72– 73). Senior military commanders on both sides proved to be even more prepared to draw up a concrete agreement than were their “civilian” superiors (pp. 87–90). So why did a half decade of intense negotiations fail to produce a mutually acceptable accord? Cobban shows that the Israeli-Syrian talks of the 1990s died of a thousand cuts. The promising discussions that took place between the chiefs of the two countries’ general staffs in June 1995 broke down when Binyamin Netanyahu informed the Knesset that he had obtained “a document of concessions [given] to the army chief of staff, General Amnon Shahak, for the talks in Washington” (p. 91). Equally construc tive negotiations at Wye Plantation in January 1996 were upset when Foreign Minister Ehud Barak “told IDF Radio that he considered ‘it is too early to determine whether we have a partner for extensive, substantive, and thorough negotiations of the issues’” (p. 137). A third round of bargaining at Wye foundered when Prime Minister Shimon Peres unexpectedly called early elections, thereby “polarizing the tenor of public discourse” inside Israel, while at the same time persuading al-Asad to “hedge his bets” against the failure of the talks by allowing Iranian Vice President Hasan Habibi to meet with the leaders of Lebanon’s Hizbullah and a number of militant Palestinian organizations (pp. 146–147). Under these circumstances, a pair of bombings that killed thirty-one Israeli civilians in March 1996 prompted the Israeli delegation to decamp. Cobban concludes with a list of lessons one might draw from the experience of Israeli-Syrian negotiations in the 1990s. Perhaps the most compelling is that it...

Israeli–Palestinian impasse

The cycle of Israeli–Palestinian violence, and the hostility of rhetoric accompanying it on both sides, worsened markedly in late February and early March. A year after being elected Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon faces much the same situation he confronted upon taking office. His diverse National Unity ruling coalition’s survival has been more a function of its internal dynamics and political balances than a reflection of effective responses to the persisting crisis. The current spate of violence has, however, raised questions about how long the present situation will continue.

Waging war on the economy. The possible threat of a bioterrorist attack against agriculture.

2001 was a difficult year for the British farmers and for the government. The foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak is now supposedly under control, but not before it resulted in the slaughter of almost 4 million cattle and an estimated cost of £5 billion to the UK economy. A national election was postponed, the agricultural department was completely restructured and British meat exports may never recover to their pre‐outbreak levels. The indirect effects were widespread, with the tourist industry suffering the greatest losses of all due to restricted access to the countryside. This FMD outbreak has been traced to a single farm in the North East of England and was due to natural causes. But if the disease had been deliberately introduced, the outcome would have been identical. ‘Agricultural bioterrorism’, or simply ‘agroterrorism’ as the phrase has now been coined, is clearly not aimed at agriculture per se , but at crippling the economy. ![][1] The events of September 11 have caused many aspects of society that were previously taken for granted to be looked at in a different light. Security, not only of the individual but also of the environment, is being re‐examined. But even before last year, there has been a steadily growing awareness, mainly in the USA, that the agricultural industry needs to be protected against a possible terrorist attack. This has resulted in increased government spending, including the establishment of a new research institute in Texas in December 2001, to investigate the potential threats and devise countermeasures. Agroterrorism could conceivably be perpetrated in a number of ways. It could manifest as a contamination of the food supply, such as the discovery in May 2000 that Palestinian terrorists had deliberately released salmonella‐ridden eggs onto the Israeli market. It is not known how many suffered food poisoning as … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Israeli Leisure, 'Palestinian Terror,' and The Question of Palestine (Again)

Israeli Leisure, 'Palestinian Terror,' and The Question of Palestine (Again)

Terrorist Attacks, Military Retaliation; Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership

I wish to draw your attention to the latest horrific act of Palestinian terrorism which occurred several hours ago, as Jews in Israel and throughout the world sat down to the festive Seder meal to celebrate Passover, the festival of freedom.

"Jewish Ethics" as an Argument in the Public Debate Over the Israeli Reaction to Palestinian Terror

"Jewish Ethics" as an Argument in the Public Debate Over the Israeli Reaction to Palestinian Terror