The Question of a Palestinian Moral Right
You can make terrorism wrong by definition, as you can make profiting or anything else wrong by definition. It gets you nowhere. To advance in argument, you will now have to show, say, that what the Palestinians are engaging in really is terrorism as you have defined it. You are in exactly the same situation of argument as when you define terrorism in some way that does not beg the question in advance, and then consider whether some of it is wrong.
Terrorism as more ordinarily defined may of course also be other things. It may be self-defence, resistance, resistance to ethnic cleansing, the struggle of a people for liberation, the struggle of a people for their very existence as a people.
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The Ordinariness of the Terrible and Horrible Answer
The terrible and horrible answer about a Palestinian moral right is in an important way not unusual at all. The counterpart answer about neo-Zionist killing is openly or covertly given by neo-Zionists, daily.
Also, glance away for a moment to items in an overflowing history of us all. The terror-bombing of Germany in World War Two, intended exactly as much to kill civilians as to defeat Hitler, was justified by we British and our leaders. So too with the genocide that went with the growth of the United States of America. So too with the murdering of British captives by the Jewish terrorists who were serving the justified cause of the founding of the state of Israel after the Holocaust.
The Truth of the Answer
There is another kind of fact, plainer truth, that enters into the first two kinds. It is historical, about a people and the usurpation of their freedom and power and hence other great goods.
In the last quarter of the 19th Century, there were about 50 times as many Palestinians as Jews in Palestine. After World War Two, when the United Nations rightly and unjustly resolved to make a homeland for the Jews out of one part of Palestine, there were in fact equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians in that part. There were 80 times as many Palestinians as Jews in the other part. There is now a Jewish state violating the remaining homeland of the remaining Palestinians.
Asserting the Answer
Do you now say that even if the moral right of the Palestinians to their terrorism is or were true, there are or would be reasons for not asserting it? Do you say no one thinks all truths must be uttered?
It seems to me that this truth, unlike some others, calls out to be uttered. It calls out to be uttered in proper language and with proper passion. One reason has to do with another fact of human nature and history, lesser than those mentioned earlier but of great importance.
In such a conflict as the one in Palestine, there is a primary question of who and what is right, which of course is inescapable, and with which we have been concerned. There are also conventional inclinations about the conflict. In a word, they are inclinations to go along with what is more official, legitimated, or recognized. They include the inclination to go along with a democracy, a state, a power. Or indeed a superpower.
If you do not stand up openly for the justice of the Palestinian cause, you give encouragement to the secondary inclinations. In fact it is dishonourable to allow oneself to be, or to encourage others to be, in the grip of the categories of the official and the like. The gas chambers were official. Hitler was elected.
