COMMENTARY: Defining terrorism begins with common sense

One of the most important things I tried to teach my daughters is that things are usually more straightforward than they seem. The world is complicated, and sometimes there are layers of complications that lie on top of social, political and religious issues. But once you peel away the surface of things, the core issues are surprisingly straightforward. And so it is with the problem of terrorism.

I worry that many people are distracted by the ideological noise that swirls around us and quite unintentionally become enablers of terrorism. This has to stop.

You will be disappointed if you turn to Dr. Google for a definition. When I recently took a look, the first definition that came up on my screen was that terrorism is the use of violence or the threat of violence to achieve political, social or religious goals. Well, you can see the problem with this. Accepting this definition would demand that you condemn every country in history and every political, social or religious movement.

Using this flawed definition, the American revolutionaries would have to be described as terrorists because they used violence and had a political goal. And today, every time the United States sends military ships to support an ally under threat, you would have to say that the United States was engaged in terrorism.

Sloppy definitions of terrorism have allowed some to claim quite wrongly that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” It implies that the definition of terrorism is just a matter of personal perspective. If everyone is a terrorist, then no one is a terrorist. Once we accept this definition, we cannot condemn the 9/11 terrorists who flew planes into the Twin Towers and Pentagon, killing 3,000 innocent people. Well, this is absurd. It turns right and wrong on its head.

What, then, is terrorism? It is the intentional killing of the innocent to make a social, political or religious point. One has to begin with common sense. Terrorists are not just being violent; they are intentionally turning violence against completely innocent people.

This is why Hamas is rightly designated as a terrorist organization. Consider its Oct. 7 attack on the men, women and children attending the Supernova Music Festival and the surrounding area in southern Israel, which left 1,200 people dead. Like the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, this horrible attack intentionally targeted completely innocent people. In both cases, the terrorists didn’t really care who they killed. What they sought was to advertise their causes.

Terrorism is never justified. Never. War is a terrible thing, and during wars, innocent people inevitably die. But targeting the innocent is never acceptable. If we cannot make this simple distinction, we are morally lost. But what can be done to wage war against a much stronger force? Terrorists sometimes claim that their actions are justified because they oppose a much stronger opponent. What is sometimes called “guerrilla warfare” might make sense. However, guerrilla warfare is quite different from terrorism.

When Americans opposed England in what became known as the Revolutionary War, they faced an opponent much stronger than them. So sometimes, they hid behind trees and ambushed British soldiers, retreating quickly to avoid a counterattack. This was not the killing of the innocent; British soldiers were trained, armed for combat and were the official military representatives of British power. They were ready for combat but surprised at the particular moment they were attacked. They may not have expected to be attacked by people hiding behind trees, because they were used to facing opponents on open ground, but that was a failure of their military strategy. Guerrilla war is still war; it is not terrorism.

Let’s be clear: Hamas is a terrorist organization. Even if you have serious criticisms of Israel, and even if you support a Palestinian state, it is never legitimate to support terrorism. It is, I repeat, never justified. The innocent should never be intentionally targeted. The ends do not justify the means. Representatives of Hamas sometimes claim that no Israelis are innocent, so their attacks cannot be terrorism. But let us be real. Look at the people who were targeted on Oct. 7. No one with any moral clarity could say they were not innocent.

Moral clarity is what is at stake here, something that seems to be in short supply. Terrorism is never a legitimate tool, no matter what the grievance. When you think about it, nothing could be simpler.

Solomon D. Stevens is the author of “Religion, Politics, and the Law” (co-authored with Peter Schotten) and “Challenges to Peace in the Middle East.” He wrote this for InsideSources.com.