For a year now, we have been witnessing—yet again—how easily the word “terrorist” can be used to justify the eradication of a people, the destruction of countries, and the suffering of millions.
We have been watching unspeakable levels of violence, record numbers of children, healthcare workers, UN employees, and journalists killed, unprecedented destruction of hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and the trampling of vast numbers of international laws, resolutions, and humanitarian institutions under the watchful and approving eyes of some of the most powerful countries in the world.
For a year, the horror has been streamed live, by both the victims and the perpetrators. The victims, trying to show the world the scale of their suffering, and the perpetrators, gleefully boasting about their crimes. We have heard genocidal statements from officials at press conferences and on widely watched screens.
We have seen an endless stream of blood and limbs from Gaza and the rest of Palestine passing through Lebanon, all the way to the grand hollow halls of the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. Yet nothing seems to stop the supply and detonation of endless tons of bombs—all of it justified by one word, one dehumanizing word that has become synonymous with a whole group of people living in a vast region rich with resources: “Terrorist.”
Terrorist: noun /ˈterərɪst/
There is no universally accepted definition of “terrorism” as a crime. The most common definitions adopted by the United Nations in the absence of a globally agreed-upon one, refer to criminal acts intended to cause death, serious injury, or provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group, or individuals for political purposes, which are under no circumstances justifiable by any political, ideological, racial, ethnic, or religious grounds.
The term “terrorist”, however, has long been used as a racist epithet rather than a legal term. In recent decades, it has primarily come to simply signify any and all “Muslim,” “Arab,” or “Brown” (men). The terrorist is the equivalent of the savage in classical colonial tropes, a figure whose life is deemed threatening and disposable, justifying his eradication as a mere obstacle in a world that belongs to the colonizers.
This terrorist is often imagined as male, and violence against him, his family, and his surroundings is not seen as violent. It is framed as a necessary action to protect those whose lives are valued from those whose lives are not, shielding the world of the colonizer from the inherent threat the colonized represents.
To construct this man as inherently violent and threatening, he must be dehumanized and denied a voice, a name, a life, and any semblance of humanity. He is painted solely as a threat, pure senseless evil. He embodies violence and aggression, while any action taken against him is deemed legitimate self-defense against the terror his mere existence poses to the colonizer’s self-image, greed, and drive for total dominance.
This is how “terrorist” becomes a racist slur rather than a legal term, reserved for those whom the colonizers deem disposable or obstructive to their supremacy. It becomes a tool of dehumanization, oppression and eradication, wielded throughout the brutal history of European colonialism with ever-growing technologies of mass murder and destruction.
The terrorist, as a racist construct, embodies everything that the colonizer fears. It justifies killing him, erasing the possibility of his existence by targeting his entire group, their culture, and their memory.
Terror: noun /ˈterər/
The word “terror” means extreme fear, and there is no greater terror than being dehumanized by the world’s most powerful military machinery. To know that your life and those of your loved ones have been declared disposable by those who can end it with the push of a button, without consequence, is the epitome of terror.
There is absolute terror in the deafening, piercing sound of warplanes, raining explosions and destruction on a geography without boundaries. Entire families and memories can vanish in an instant, while the perpetrators are either celebrated or ignored, their actions justified by simply labeling the victims as terrorists or as being in their proximity.
Terror is listening to the world’s most powerful leaders defend the mass murder of your people while silencing those who speak out to demand peace, justice or even respect of the very laws and institutions that they have long boasted. Terror is watching bombs tear apart children’s bodies, only for the world to point at the scattered limbs and scream, “Terrorists!” It is making these lifeless dreams invisible to all but those who recognize themselves in these mutilated bodies.
We have lived in terror our entire lives, as the world’s greatest power unleashed its warplanes and narratives upon us, turning us into monsters on screens and in headlines, or into dead bodies and traumatized survivors, stealing our dreams, ambitions, hopes, and loved ones, erasing our memories, histories, and futures.
Terror is reading the history of colonial brutality inflicted on our multitudes of peoples for centuries across the globe and watching the descendants of those same colonizers label us the new savages.
Terror is what we have been living for generations and a year, and continue to endure every single day.
