Terrorism (6-24-46)

The Pittsburgh Press (June 24, 1946)

Background of news –
Terrorism

By Bertram Benedict

The world had hoped that organized terrorism as a political terrorism as a political device had ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militaristic Japan, and with a consequent feeling of security on the part of Communist Russia.

But the hope has been dashed. Terrorism reigns in many a post-war land and now Palestine, ironically enough called the “Holy Land,” has produced attempts by Jewish nationalists to coerce Great Britain by terroristic methods.

“Lunacy,” say some of the Jewish leaders about the kidnapping of half a dozen British officers and their detention as hostages. But some leaders of the Jewish “underground” defend this particular act of terrorism as showing the British that the Jews mean business.

Underground leaders defend also the dynamiting of bridges and railroad equipment as hindering the dispatch of British re-enforcements from Egypt and the Levant states, and as showing the Arabs that if it does come to open civil war, the Arab communications could be cut.

The assassination method

The Arabs themselves probably would be no slouches if they went into terrorism on their side. The Arabs let loose outbreaks of violence against British policies in Palestine in 1920-35.

In fact, assassination as a means to hold on to power was developed as a fine art by the Arabs in the Middle Ages. The Arab practitioners of the art used to nerve themselves for a murder by taking hashish, and hence were called “hashishin.”

In the latter decades of the 19th century, a definite cult of terrorism, including assassination, was developed by revolutionary movements, such as radical wings of the anarchists and nihilists. Some of the terrorists were themselves men and women who hated violence, but relied on a terrorist act as an “attentat” to call attention to wrongs.

The “attentat” usually resulted only in further repression which made things all the harder for the revolutionists, and early in the 20th century most of the radicals were prepared to admit that terrorism was politically useless.

Plenty of terrorism

Then came the all-pervasive spirit of violence engendered by World War I, and majorities took over the terrorist cult from the minorities.

Mussolini instigated the murder of Matteotti, the Italian Socialist leader; Hitler resorted to his “blood purge” to wipe out opponents in the Nazi ranks, and then to try to wipe out racial minorities he didn’t like, such as the Jews and the Poles; Stalin cleaned house by killing off some of his political opponents, just as earlier he had wiped out the “Kulaks” standing in the way of state farming: and the Japanese militarists put down dissentients by the simple expedient of having them assassinated.

Great Britain, traditionally generous in tolerating radical propaganda and demonstrations, has had in modern times practically no outstanding political assassinations, and the Chartist and anti-Corn Law demonstrations of a century ago were relatively mild.

But that wasn’t true in Ireland, where repression begat terrorist campaigns, culminating in the “Black-and-Tan” regime after World War I. The Irish terrorism didn’t produce independence, and the majority of the Irish nationalists finally accepted dominion status, only to turn that by peaceful means into what amounts to independence today.