The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
If you are on the side of the above and against the US... the US is going to seek you down and stop you.
I don't understand why that's surprising. It's like when the Weather Underground took an oath to destroy the US and was surprised when the FBI started following them around.. you declared yourself an enemy.
More seriously though, there’s no reasonable comparison to be made between any western power and Iran, Russia, or (and especially) Hamas.
October 7th was beyond the pale. Systemic rape, torture, and terror used to be something reasonable people could agree to stand against.
Seriously, sit down, make a list of incidents, including weighing the outcome of those incidents. If it's a case where an officer or a soldier did something wrong, list what happened after (court, punishment, cleared of wrongdoing, etc)
Then do the same for your favorite alternate country that you think is superior. If you want to pick team Iran or Russia, then lay it out for them. Make the same list.
Eight of the shooters were charged with depriving the students of their civil rights, but were acquitted in a bench trial.
I'm not going to make an exhaustive list of all the terrible shit perpetrated by the US government and its agents. It would be too detrimental to my health. But you choosing to bury your head doesn't prove anything either, so I guess I have one up on you.
you would do well to note that this page links directly to an entire wikipedia entry for 'US War Crimes': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
This is already an extreme perversion of justice all on its own. Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. This is simply armed conflict.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
Does that include property in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon? Because if the people who spray painted something are "terrorists", I want to know what the people who wiped Rafah off the face of the earth are called.
Israelis and others who support this have shown that the lesson they took from the Holocaust is that they believe it's morally fine as long as they're the ones doing the killing.
Terrorism is widely understood to be the deployment of military force against civilian populations. Of course states do this all the time, but 'state terrorism' is basically dependent on whether politicians in country A align with country B or not; if they don't, they'll call out state abuses in country B as state terrorism, if not they'll say it's law and order.
Regardless of these nuances, extending the definition to include any kind of property damage is just laughably opportunist.
"Any kind" is quite the load bearing argument there. Let me remind you Europe is under an ongoing land invasion, which is why fucking with its defensive capabilities is unlikely to solicit much sympathies.
I think it’s worth considering that you’re much more likely to be a resident or a citizen than a state when you’re deciding how you feel about these kinds of things.
Damaging military equipment is a military end, not a political one. If it were otherwise, then a military attacking a military would definitionally be terrorism. At that point, you've removed the utility of the word "terrorism" from English and made it synonymous with "armed conflict."
Terrorism being done chiefly to change policies by terrorizing people through symbolic acts is a constrained, generally-accepted definition of terrorism.
Contrast with 9/11, where symbols of American capitalism, filled with civilians, were attacked in order to terrify people who have nothing to do with those buildings into supporting changes in policy that hurt the US.
Which is typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens…
> you are not allowed to murder unarmed soldiers,
That's also false, you can absolutely kill unarmed combatants so long as they remain combatants. Eg you can bomb an artillery crew even if they don't have sidearms.
To be eligible for capture, a combatant must generally surrender.
> typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens
I encourage you to read up on POW camps. There are no attorneys or rights. You may work POWs. There are cases in which food and medical aid can be severely limited depending on how it is sourced. You may hold POWs functionally forever.
POWs don’t have attorneys, but they do have rights. Limiting food and medical aid is a war crime.
Of course, everybody routinely violates the rights of POWs, and only the losers ever get prosecuted.
Laying down your arms is generally considered an expression of surrender and renders protection.
Also, who sends scouts unarmed? They should at least have a sidearm.
And it was a hypothetical, there are a lot of situations where you can kill unarmed military personnel legally.
You can just bomb military barracks full of sleeping unarmed people legally for example.
And no, limiting food and medical is not a war crime if the source being limited is from the captor and matches the treatment of their own troops.
I hope no one takes this seriously.
If you're caught sabotaging equipment on a US military installation in many cases they are authorized to use deadly force and you'll be held accountable under the UCMJ. The absolute best outcome is you're designated a terrorist and live to see a prison cell.
Attacking military targets is somewhere between an insurgency, partisanism, or an armed conflict.
If we let terrorism mean “any act against the state”, then people who burn police cars are the same as people who plant bombs in shopping malls.
Not consistently, and its not a clear definition.
The same groups that attacked civilians in places I have lived in also attacked military targets as part of the same strategy. Terrorism is used to threaten, divert resources from front lines, cause economic damage, etc. Civilian targets are attacked in most wars. Is a car bomb outside a military barracks that different from one in a civilian area? What about a suicide bomb aimed at a sentry on a civilian road? I was about to drive past that one. Are the civilians who were killed collateral damage from an attack on a military target or victims of terrorism?
> people who burn police cars
So people who attack a civilian target. By your own definition they are terrorists if they are doing it for political motives.
If the same group attacks civilian and military targets then the civilian targets are terrorism and the military targets are not.
Is it not "legitimate" in the same way to kill terrorists?
Corrections welcome if I am wrong.
That would be a lot worse for them than sanctions.
That pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Definitions of "terrorism" that extend to sabotage against occupying or invading militaries and their allies are meaningless and hollow dilutions. At that point the discourse has been reduced to something like "violence is scary".
This use is also interesting (and galling) because it frames disarming as an unacceptably violent act.
There are some definitions of terrorism that leave room to designate attacks against professional agents of state violence as "terror", e.g., attacks on soldiers who are off-duty, attacks on civilian police forces, attacks on nominally civilian intelligence organizations like the CIA, etc.
Imo such uses of the words "terror" and "terrorism" should be considered carefully, because sometimes they are meaningful or useful, but often they are essentially attempts to hoodwink the public. Effectively they are designed so that any attack against an occupying army by a faction too weak to muster a permanent standing army of equal strength falls into the "terrorism" category, which means invasion is "war" but resistance is "terrorism".
The notion of "civilian" or "non-combatant" isn't always straightforward, either. In the history of the PKK, for example, one of the "civilian" forces targeted by bombings and shootings were a local militia whose sole purpose was suppressing popular unrest among local Kurdish populations who were forbidden from speaking their own native languages, celebrating their holidays, etc. Formally these militias were not part of an army. But their scarcely concealed function was suppression of the local population, unlike (for example) a proper civilian police force whose role is at least nominally to promote public safety, assist vulnerable (weak, elderly, disabled) citizens with daily life, investigate crimes, mediate/de-escalate disputes, etc.
Anyway, it's worth sitting down and thinking through a few different serious definitions of terrorism and asking yourself what use they are. One or more definitions will likely stand out to you as particularly useful when it comes to thinking through things like the safety of innocents, the morality and bounds of acceptable political activism, and other topics that might directly affect your comfort and safety. You'll often find that governments and large press organizations try to trade on the emotional impact of those definitions while operating under rather different ones that are more convenient for themselves.
British people attacking British forces are not sabotaging an occupying or invading military.
That's the definition every undemocratic occupying power uses.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/palestine-group-attacks-raf-...
Its definitely not OK to vandalise things, and if is not terrorism what is it? War? In which case expect the military to shoot back.
What about their attack that disabled a police officer mentioned in this thread. That is an attack on her body.
You might disagree: the fact that you mention the military "shooting back" when we're discussing a jet-engine being sabbotaged suggests that you believe a state is allowed to be / ought to be disproportionate in its violence towards its citizens.
That is in no way a good faith interpretation of what I said.
During a 2024 raid on an Elbit Systems factory near Bristol, Samuel Corner—a Palestine Action activist—struck police sergeant Kate Evans in the back with a sledgehammer while she was on her knees arresting another activist. She suffered a fractured lumbar spine, was off work for three months, and later had to give up her rank. Corner was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm and sentenced to seven years and eight months.
Also groups protesting Islamic violence rarely drive their cars through St John’s Wood screaming “kill the Jews rape their daughters” but that’s just my own personal experience.
The logic seems to be that Hamas has committed terrorist attacks against Israel, and is also the government of Palestine, so anyone fighting for the human rights of Palestinian people is actually materially supporting Hamas terrorism against Israelis. That does not really track if you know anything at all about what's going on in Palestine right now, or what people's actual criticisms of Israel are.
There's no actual requirement for violence for it to be terrorism.
It's in the name. Terrifying people into compliance. Well that isn't the case here.
It even comes in the effect at the very probability of genocide occuring. Preventing new armaments being sold to Israel is thus the rational and responsible thing to do, for example what Spain has been doing by refusing the transportation of arms through their country. This off course earns you some powerful, heavily moneyed enemies.
Edit: This was an attempt to explain why civilians are spray painting Elbit's military planes.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"