"Israel as a terrorist state."

The rock it is built upon.

Let us rejoice in the despair of others. Bezalel Smotrich. (4800, cc by SA 4.0/ Wikimedia Commons.)

26 SEPTEMBER—Much has already been said and written about the significance of Israel’s lethal sabotage of electronic devices in Lebanon last week. It is a new kind of warfare, it suggests the vulnerability of global supply chains, the possibilities of other such operations are at this moment impossible to calculate. Yes, yes, and yes. In some way one cannot yet fathom, the Israelis have turned yet another page in the twenty-first century story, which has so far proven a dreadful story, and the new page is not altogether legible.

I think Edward Snowden has so far had the most useful word for the Israelis’ diabolic subterfuge in Lebanon. “Indistinguishable from terrorism,” he remarked on “X” the day of the explosions. Here is the former National Security Agency contractor’s full statement after the first of Israel’s cyberattacks, involving the exploding pagers:

What Israel has just done is, via *any* method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism. https://t.co/th4fYwa0jr

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 17, 2024

It has been difficult even for Israel’s most committed apologists to avoid this conclusion, even if they have been chary of the term. Here is David Sanger, a long-serving New York Times correspondent in Washington who has, to put the matter politely, a questionable relationship with the national-security apparatus, in the paper’s 19 September editions:

The chief effect is psychological. Just as pervasive surveillance makes people question who might have access to the phones that now contain details, treasures and secrets of one’s life — pictures, text messages, credit card numbers — the sabotage makes everyone fearful that ordinary devices can become an instant source of injury or death. It gnaws at the psyche.

The purposeful inducing of fear in a general populace, gnawing at the psyche, is the very definition of terrorism. Or if you prefer, this is from the U.N. General Assembly’s condemnation of terrorism in Resolution 49/60, passed thirty years ago this December:

Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious, or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.

I have taken to referencing the Zionist state as “terrorist Israel” since it began its terrorizing assault on the Palestinians of Gaza last 7 October. I am now prompted to reflect that we must consider the events of these last 11 months in the context of a long history of terrorism associated with the Zionist project. Israel has never known a time when it did not indulge in terrorist activities. It was, indeed, a terrorist state in the making before, long before, one could speak even of the State of Israel.

We should be familiar with this history, at least in outline. In it we find numerous characteristics of the terror Israel has imposed on the Palestinians of Gaza—and now on the Palestinians of the West Bank and in Lebanon. Three of these must now be singled out. One, the spread of fear is not accidental or any kind of collateral damage. It has been a feature of Israeli tactics since its founding generations began agitating for an independent state a century ago. Two, and related to the use of fear, Israeli terrorism is by design indiscriminate. The dreadful death toll in Gaza, this is to say, is intentional, as the project is not so much to destroy Hamas as it is the whole of Gazan society. And finally, the intent always is to break the will of those Israel considers its enemies. It is to induce one or another kind of despair.