From an article1:
The different outcomes of the Goldstein and Hadayet cases, whatever the motivation of their prosecutors, illustrate a certain vagueness in America's war on terrorism: There really is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a terrorist act. Whatever the working definition is today though, experts agree it's becoming increasingly broad.
Traditionally, intelligence and law enforcement agents used four criteria in determining terrorist acts: A suspected terrorist act was premeditated; it was political, in that it was designed to change the existing political order; it was aimed at civilians; and it was carried out by subnational groups -- not by the army of a country.
More recently, the notion that terrorism has to be carried out by specific terrorist groups has been de-emphasized by law enforcement. After the Sept. 11 attack President Bush signed an order aimed at curtailing fundraising for terrorist organizations. In it, terrorism was defined as "an activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking." The element of conspiracy, the idea of agents working on behalf of larger organizations, was noticeably absent.
The Goldstein and Hadayet cases also highlight the overlap in crimes determined to be terrorism and those classified as hate crimes. "Terrorism is an act designed to spread fear to a large group of people, where with a hate crime that's not necessarily true," says Mark Potok, director of publications and information for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes. "My concern is if 'terrorism' is overused. It deserves to be treated seriously and not demeaned to mean a crime that many people don't like." (
link)
This article raises some good questions.
Complete text of the article,
Terrorism or hate crime?, by Eric Boehlert (must view ad to read article)
On Independence Day last summer, a depressed 41-year-old Muslim immigrant by the name of Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, whose views on the Arab-Israeli conflict had become increasingly extreme, approached the ticket counter of the Israeli-run El Al airline at Los Angeles International Airport. Loaded down with a recently purchased .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun and a 6-inch knife, he opened fire. During a 30-second rampage, Hadayet emptied the 10-round revolver, killing two people and injuring scores more, before an El Al security guard shot him dead.
Six weeks later, in Tampa, Fla., a depressed Jewish podiatrist by the name of Dr. Robert Goldstein, 38, who wanted to send a message on behalf of "his people" following the attacks of Sept. 11, and to express his anger over the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, was arrested after police raided his home. There they discovered a detailed plan to blow up 50 local mosques and Islamic centers, "kill all 'rags‚'" and "liquidate" Muslims during the attacks if necessary. Police also uncovered a vast illegal stash of weapons, including 30 explosive devices, light-armor rockets, hand grenades, a 5-gallon gasoline bomb, .50-caliber machine guns, silencers, and sniper rifles.
Ultimately, law enforcement authorities would label one man a terrorist, and the other a dangerous but deluded perpetrator of hate crimes. How do two crimes with similarities that seem highly relevant in the midst of a war on terrorism come to be defined so differently? Some observers cite paranoia in the wake of Sept. 11 as the reason. Others don't. But even some law enforcement officials are stymied by the choices made by their colleagues in the two cases.
Prosecutors working independently in the Hadayet and Goldstein cases concluded, after extensive criminal investigations, that both men were essentially unstable lone wolves without ties to any larger political or extremist organizations. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Florida, after consulting with Department of Justice attorneys, reached a plea agreement in the Goldstein case that reflected, apparently, this conclusion: He was convicted of weapons charges, attempting to damage religious property, and violating civil rights. His crime was not defined as a terrorist act.
But last week, after initially angering critics by downplaying the possibility of terrorism in the Hadayet case, the FBI confirmed that it had categorized the LAX shooting as a terrorist act. The final determination, according to Laura Bosley, spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles office, was made in Washington by FBI Director Bill Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
The handling of the two cases, and above all their conclusions, raised the concerns of Muslim and Arab leaders who have suggested that, since Sept. 11, a double standard has emerged in cases that might be construed as acts of terror. They believe that defendants with a Middle Eastern background are far more likely to be labeled terrorists.
"There's a political will to charge terrorism on certain cases and not on others," says Khurrum Wahid, a criminal defense attorney and legal advisor to CAIR, the nation's largest Arab-American advocacy group. "And it's being used against anyone that's consistent with who we're going after for the 9/11 attacks."
The obvious difference between the two cases is that Goldstein was apprehended before he killed anyone, and Hadayet was not. From a prosecutorial perspective, there was another key difference: Hadayet acted alone, while Goldstein conspired with two others -- his wife, Kristi Goldstein, and his friend, Michael Hardee -- in creating plans to carry out attacks on Muslims mosques, attacks that reportedly were to include placing napalm under a dirt road near the targeted building in order to keep policemen at bay following the attacks. Both Kristi Goldstein and Hardee pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their cooperation in prosecuting Robert Goldstein.
"If Goldstein had a different background, that group would have been categorized as a terrorist cell," says Wahid. "They were working in collusion, targeting a specific group, and hoping to express political views with an action of planned violence. If they'd been Muslim you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that they wouldn't have been treated as a terrorism case." Instead, complains Wahid, the police treated it as a mental health issue since Goldstein had a history of depression.
"We felt that, based on evidence, we filed the proper charges," says Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. District Attorney's office in Tampa. He notes that Goldstein could be sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. "That's not a slap on the wrist. It's a significant amount of time." (In an unusual move, if the judge decides to sentence Goldstein to more than 15 years, the defendant will be allowed to withdraw his plea.)
The different outcomes of the Goldstein and Hadayet cases, whatever the motivation of their prosecutors, illustrate a certain vagueness in America's war on terrorism: There really is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a terrorist act. Whatever the working definition is today though, experts agree it's becoming increasingly broad.
Traditionally, intelligence and law enforcement agents used four criteria in determining terrorist acts: A suspected terrorist act was premeditated; it was political, in that it was designed to change the existing political order; it was aimed at civilians; and it was carried out by subnational groups -- not by the army of a country.
More recently, the notion that terrorism has to be carried out by specific terrorist groups has been de-emphasized by law enforcement. After the Sept. 11 attack President Bush signed an order aimed at curtailing fundraising for terrorist organizations. In it, terrorism was defined as "an activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking." The element of conspiracy, the idea of agents working on behalf of larger organizations, was noticeably absent.
The Goldstein and Hadayet cases also highlight the overlap in crimes determined to be terrorism and those classified as hate crimes. "Terrorism is an act designed to spread fear to a large group of people, where with a hate crime that's not necessarily true," says Mark Potok, director of publications and information for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes. "My concern is if 'terrorism' is overused. It deserves to be treated seriously and not demeaned to mean a crime that many people don't like."
Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counter-terrorism chief, thinks prosecutors in Tampa made the right call by essentially charging Goldstein with hate crimes. "Traditionally, acts of terrorism try to change the political dynamic, to influence a political response." He says that was not the case in Tampa. "[Goldstein] had anger directed at a class of people -- Arabs and Muslims -- and he wanted to kill them. That's a hate crime, or violating someone's civil rights."
Using the same guidelines, he suggests the FBI went too far in labeling Hadayet's LAX shooting as terrorism. "In practical terms, he's a murderer and he's dead. But killing Jews at the El Al counter is not trying to change the political dynamic. It's an act based on hatred and emotion. It's the act of revenge."
FBI spokeswoman Bosley disagrees. "He was not acting on the behalf of any terrorist organization, but it was an act of terrorism," she says. "He endangered human life and appeared to be intending to intimidate a civilian population through a violent act."
The final categorization of the LAX attack was certainly the topic of much debate. In the days following the shooting, the FBI indicated that the shooting could have been a hate crime or a random act of violence. That approach generated criticism from the Israeli government, conservative commentators, the Anti-Defamation Leagues, and some members of Congress, most notably Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who wrote the FBI urging it to open a terrorism investigation, which it did.
As the Jewish Week reported last year, "The FBI, under pressure from the Jewish community, is now investigating [the El Al attack] as a terrorist incident."
But criticism escalated last September when the Los Angeles Times reported, "Federal investigators have all but concluded that Hesham Mohamed Hadayet was motivated more by personal woes than by political anger when he shot and killed two people at the El Al Airlines ticket counter."
Soon the debate shifted to Washington. While there was consultation about how to classify the attack, in the end it was "D.C.'s call" to define the shooting as terrorism, says Bosley at the FBI in Los Angeles. "They made the final decision."
Adds Cannistraro, "The government seemed to be giving in to political pressure. It's unfortunate, but everything connected to terrorism is politicized these days."
reference=http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/17/terrorist_act/
The Clipboard: Terrorism or hate crime?
Subject: Terro and Hate
You might find this link interesting. It's appalling and a taste of how terror and hate crimes co-exists.link
note: comment edited to add hyperlink
I'm also curious how you are certain that Hedayat deliberately intended to do what he did and it was not that he also was mentally unstable. Have you read some statement to this regard?
Finally, what do you mean that Palestine "will never be Muslim land"? Do you mean that Muslims will never have power there or that there will be no Muslims there?
Before you jump to condemn all members of a religion, it would be good for you to take the time to look a little. The extreme voices usually get the most attention. But don't assume that they are the only voices that exist.
Now, I don't want you to be fooled by the apologists of terror. They tell us that the way to end terror is to appease it, to meet or give in to the terrorists' demands -- because -- listen to their argument -- because, they tell us, the root cause of terrorism -- did you ever hear that? -- the root cause of terrorism is the deprivation of national and civic rights.
Well, let's examine that proposition. If that were the case, then in the thousands of conflicts and struggles for national and civil rights in modern times, we would expect to have found endless examples of terrorism. But guess what: We don't.
Mahatma Gandhi did not use terrorism in fighting for the independence of India. The peoples of Eastern Europe did not resort to terrorism to bring down the Berlin Wall. But one other example; one other example. Martin Luther King did not resort to terrorism in fighting for equal rights for all Americans. In fact, speaking in this city, in this very place, four decades ago, Martin Luther King preached a creed that was the very opposite of terrorism -- not violence, non-violence; completely the opposite.
So now we must ask ourselves, why did all these people pursue their cause without resorting to terror? Because they believed in the sanctity of each human life, because they were committed to the ideals of liberty, because they championed the values of democracy; simply put, because they were democrats, not terrorists. That's why.
But, you see, those who practice terrorism do not believe in these ideals. In fact, they believe the very opposite. They believe that the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything and everything. They believe that it allows them to break any law, to discard any moral code, to trample all human rights into the dust. They believe that their cause permits them to indiscriminately murder and maim innocent men and women. They believe that it lets them blow up a bus full of babies.
My friends, there's a name for the mindset that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism. Indeed, this is the root cause of terrorism. The root cause of terrorism is the totalitarian mindset, a tyranny that systematically brainwashes the minds of its subjects, to suspend all moral constraints for the sake of a twisted cause. And this is why, from its inception, totalitarianism has always been wedded to terrorism, from Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to the ayatollahs to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden to Yasser Arafat.
As for the rest of what you've said, you can read my archives to see what I think of terrorists, suicide bombers and their like.
I am sorry that you seem to believe the entire Palestinian people, down to the last individual, are all genocidal maniacs and therefore all of them deserve the collective punishment that Israel is meting out to them. I am sorry that you can see wrong only on one side and are not willing to consider whether Israel's policies of Occupation over the last thirty years have contributed in any way to the situation.
In any case, Palestinian children are far more likely to be the victims of violence than they are to be perpetrators of violence. ConcernedGirlUK's comments are nothing short of a heinous act of defamation and bigotry when you consider the brutal facts of the Israeli occupation.
Since September 2000, over 2,250 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. 430 of these were children, according to Defense for Children International. According to the Israeli group, B’tselem, three times as many Palestinians versus Israelis have been killed since September 2000. Moreover, according to a study funded by the United States Agency for International Development conducted by CARE International and John Hopkins University found that 30 percent of Palestinian children suffer from chronic malnutrition, and another 21 percent from acute malnutrition. The occupation is THE problem. To read what a Jewish child of Holocaust survivors has to say about the daily violence inflicted by the Israeli occupation, please go to link
note: comment edited to add hyperlink
Recall also that 25% of Palestinians are Christians - Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and other denominations. Arab Christians and Muslims coexisted peacefully for centuries with what was a minority (9%) Jewish population up until the beginning of the 20th Century.
Arafat is by no means the world's most exemplary leader, but, unlike George W. Bush, Arafat was elected by a closely monitored democratic process. Moroever, it is disingenous to hold Arafat to standards that are not applied to the region's most notorious war criminal, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
This leader of Israel's ruling apartheid party has been involved in more invasions of neighboring countries than Saddam Hussein. Like former Prime Minister Menachem Begin who was the leader of a terrorist organization responsible for blowing up the King David Hotel, killing almost 100 civil servants, Sharon's record speaks for itself. As Israel's Defense Minister, Sharon was responsible for the safety of all civilians during the Israeli occupation of Beirut. Sharon is responsible for the the massacre, torture and rape of hundreds of unarmed civilians, mainly women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The International Committee of the Red Cross counted 1,500 bodies at the time of the massacre. Israeli military intelligence estimated that between 700 and 800 civilians were slaughtered. The United Nations Security Council issued an unequivocable resolution condemning what it called "the criminal massacre of Palestinian civilians in Beirut." Israel's Supreme Court held Sharon responsible for the masscre, but his political career has obviously not suffered.
Prior to Sabra and Shatila, as an Israeli military officer, Sharon led an attack on the West Bank village of Qibya in 1953, in which 69 civilians were murdered - half of them women and children.
In the 2.5 years of violence that was sparked by Ariel Sharon's inflammatory show of military force at a Muslim holy place, over 2,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military forces and armed settlers. Most of the casualties are civilians, with over 350 of them children. In the same period, more than 480 Israeli civilians have been killed, including some 90 children.
Israeli army records reveal that in the first 3 weeks of the civil protests that followed Sharon's incitement at the Al Aqsa Mosque, Israeli soldiers fired one million bullets. Over 100 Palestinian civilians were killed and more than 2,000 were injured by Israeli military forces between September and November 2000 before the first retalliatory suicide bombing was carried out.
The villification of Arafat is understandable, given America's bias towards Israel and the distortions evident in media coverage of the current conflict. But the cause of peace is not served when his counterpart, a known war criminal, is allowed to disregard UN resoluations and violate the Geneva Conventions with impunity.
Americans would do well to recall the admonition of our first president regarding our unquestioning support for Sharon and our unyielding antipathy towards Arafat. George Washington warned that such "a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."
The uprising of the British colonies in the New World predated an American national identity. The British could scoff that "There's no such place as America. There's no such thing as an American." But the first Americans knew better. We should, more than anyone else, know better before we condemn the Palestinian struggle for national identity and self-determination.
http://electronicintifada.net/
In today's article about the struggle of the Holy Land Foundation to clear its name, the Washington Post cites Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Hardly an objective voice, Matthew Levitt is known for working on behalf of the Israel's most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Moreover, while the Washington Institute for Near East Policy denies formal ties with AIPAC, its officers and board members overlap considerably. Moreover, the Institute is a publisher for Daniel Pipes, whose record of Arab American defamation includes his statement that Muslims serving in the US military "need to be watched for connections to terrorism."
Sadly, Israel's lobbyists have been frighteningly successful in their ability to similarly slander Muslim charities that provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Even more sinister, any valid criticisms of Israel's policies on legal, moral, or spiritual grounds are blasted as de facto acts of anti-Semitism. Matthew Levitt is certainly entitled to lobby on behalf of a foreign government in the same way that South Africa's lobbyists managed to keep the US Congress silent about apartheid for decades. But does the Israeli lobby have the moral authority to condemn a charity that seeks to alleviate the oppression of Israel's occupation of Palestinians?
In his keynote address to a religious conference in Boston last year on ending the Israeli occupation, Archbishop Desmond Tutu compared his observations in Palestine with what he remembers happening to blacks in South Africa. Witnessing "the horrific attacks on refugee camps, towns, villages, and Palestinian institutions," Archbishop Tutu asked, "Why is there no outcry in this country about the Israeli siege in the West Bank?" There are, in fact Jewish, Christian, and Muslim voices speaking out against the humanitarian nightmare in the occupied Palestinian Territories. But, as long as the Washington Post gives inordinate space to the defenders of injustice, voices like Archbishop Tutu will be marginalized. The government will continue to bow to pressure from lobbyists who demand that charities working on behalf of oppressed Palestinians be designated as terrorist fronts.
www.electronicintifada.net