The Difference Between Jewish and Muslim Terrorists from Planck's Constant

Heroes of Israel
Flickr Photo by: templar1307.

The phrase "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is often used by lazy minds to make moral equivalencies where none exist. You might as well say, "One man's beef is another man's chicken." This last would only be true if you had lousy taste buds or a sloppy dictionary.

When the historical expert Mos Def was last on the Bill Maher show he said, "You know, when the Revolutionary War was going on, George Washington and all them dudes was terrorists...".

Of course, Mos Def confuses treason with terrorism. As far as the King was concerned, George Washington and his fellow separatists were traitors, not terrorists since the Continental army never attacked civilians, as far as I know, to achieve their political ends. And since Mos Def gets his info from the local barbershop, it is unlikely he ever read the pamphlets of Thomas Paine or he would have read the arguments for separation from England were based on reason and the rights of man and not on violence against innocent women and children. Conflating Islamic terrorists with George Washington as if they operated in the same manner only shows Mos Def's ignorance of this country's history and lack of appreciation for the deadly threat posed by Islamic terrorists.

Terrorism is violence committed against civilians for political or other ideological goals, acts which are intended to create fear or "terror" and deliberately target non-combatants. This definition of terrorism excludes war, riot, organized crime, and muggings in the ghetto. I would have no problem even loosely calling those who attack American soldiers in Iraq "Freedom Fighters" but for the fact they also kill innocent civilians including women and children.

In response to my article Germany Responsible for Algiers Bombing
a reader left this comment:

David Ben Gurion and Menachim Begin, the 1st and 6th Prime Ministers of Israel began their careers as terrorists. Both these men were instrumental in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.

91 people were killed including 15 Jews.

Jerusalem, King David Hotel
Flickr Photo by: Noa_Schek.

OK, let's examine the King David Bombing. Before one starts imagining that this was a tourist hotel like the Red Sea Hotel the Taba Hilton which was bombed by Islamists, the King David Hotel was in fact a military headquarters used as the base for the British Secretariat, the military command and a branch of the Criminal Investigation Division. In retaliation for the British operation known as the Black Sabbath where 2,700 Jews were arrested and taken to the Rafiah internment camp, the Haganah command decided to carry out three operations against the British authorities one of which was the blowing up of the King David Hotel:

Wikipedia,
King David Hotel bombing
The details and the specific hour chosen for the attack were aimed at minimizing civilian casualties (the attack was planned before lunch time, so that there would be no people on the ground floor of the coffee shop which was the section to be destroyed. Irgun reports included explicit precautions so that the whole area would be evacuated).
...
After placing the bombs, the Irgun men quickly escaped and detonated a small explosive in the street outside the hotel to keep passers-by away from the area. The Arab workers in the kitchen were told to flee and they did.
...
A warning message was delivered to the telephone operator of the King David Hotel before the attack and also delivered to the French consulate and the Palestine Post newspaper. According to Irgun sources, the message read "I am speaking on behalf of the Hebrew underground. We have placed an explosive device in the hotel. Evacuate it at once - you have been warned."
...
Menachem Begin writes.. that the telephone message was delivered 25 - 27 minutes before the explosion. The British authorities denied for many years that there had been a warning at all, but the leaking of the internal police report on the bombing during the 1970s proved that a warning had indeed been received... According to Begin, the British had been warned of the bombing but refused to evacuate the building because "We don't take orders from the Jews".

So here we have two bombings of hotels. In one, by Islamic terrorists, there is no warning, the victims are families with children on vacation not military personnel, and are intentionally targeted for barbaric destruction. In the other, by Jewish Freedom Fighters, there is a warning, innocent civilians are not targeted, and even the military are asked to evacuate. This difference cuts through our reader's argument like a knife through silk.

It should be noted that Menachem Begin could have gone for maximum British and civilian deaths. Why bother with warnings, why endanger Jewish lives by taking extra time to make sure the Arab kitchen workers left? Indeed the British didn't even have a pretense that this was their homeland (certainly none of them were even born there) and so were truly occupiers. So why didn't he act like your average Islamic, barbaric, savage, uncivilized, child-maiming, female-raping, flea-ridden, civilian-hacking, backward, primitive terrorist? Because he was Jewish.

If Muslims acted like so-called Jewish "Terrorists", no innocent civilian lives would be lost. Even in the last war in Lebanon, if Hezbollah didn't forcibly keep civilians in the battle zone only combatants would have been killed. The world could use more Jewish terrorists.

Legend for photo: Clockwise from bottom left: David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan & Yigal Allon.