X-Message-Number: 17632
From: "Robert Moore" <>
References: <>
Subject: Is terror getting a bad name?
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 10:18:20 -0700

Rafi, with much respect to you and your father, I believe terrorism should
have a bad name and should be viewed in the same light whether one is the
top dog or the underdog.

To me, the practice of purposely attacking civilians or non-military
facilities is repulsive and primitive.  Even attacking military targets
without notification of a war footing or aggressive stance seems wrong.
Terrorist-like attacks are expected from wild animals, but should be
resisted by thinking beings.

As humans we *can* rise above using terrorism.  We can virtually eliminate
terrorism and make it nearly universally and culturally unacceptable.   It
would take much effort over several decades and require aggressively
shutting down, by force if necessary, every terrorist organization and every
terrorist in the world.  We would also need to promote the mindset that
terrorism is inhuman.

There is a historical precedent for believing that elimating terrorism can
be successful.  I am thinking of the case of slavery...

At the beginning of the 19th century slavery was nearly universal in the
world.  In 1808 the British Parliament banned the international slave trade.
Enforced first by the British Navy and later by the French and US Navies,
slave trade across the oceans was stopped.  The anti-slavery movement
eventually spread also to the German, Russian, Ottoman, Dutch spheres of
influence, including their respective colonies.  By the end of the 19th
century slavery was well on its way to being virtually eliminated. [see
Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell]

Let's leave terrorism to the wild animals, and as humans let's rise above
terrorism. There are, after all, many other historically successful ways for
underdogs to fight back, including civil disobedience, boycotts, mass
protests, strikes, alliance with more powerful states, gaining ecomonic
superiority, gaining technological superiority, and even, if necessary, war.

Let us, as humans, just take terrorism out of our toolbox of revolutionary
fighting tools, just as we have taken slavery out of our economical toolbox!

Robert Moore

> Reading the discussion by Ettinger, Darwin and others, I was gratified for
> the support for Israel. I worry, though, that we fall into the trap of
> viewing terrorists as misguided or deranged individuals, supported by
> fanatics. This is dangerous because it then becomes difficult to
appreciate
> the wide support that they may enjoy. So I wanted to contribute a bit of
> personal history.
>
> My late father was a terrorist during the 1940s in Palestine. He told me
> once that he regretted not participating in the mission that blew up the
> King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1947. He admired the organizers,
including
> (later) Israeli Prime minister Begin, and voted for him in several
elections.
>
> I love my father, and I knew him as a good and honest man. Terrorism is a
> traditional weapon of the underdog. Since we are not underdogs, we are the
> target rather than the perpetrators of terrorism. However, we should not
> forget that our view of terrorism is colored by the fact that we are top
dogs.
>
> Rafi Haftka

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