"Is It Terrorism When Israel Does It?"

Ever since MSNBC ran that story linking the Mossad to the Iranian dissident group Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) in targeting Iranian nuclear scientists and nuclear facilities, the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork, pointing the finger at Israel for 'participating in terrorism' and wondering with elephantine illogic why the US should be continuing to give aid to 'a supporter of terrorism'. Usually coupled with complaints about this supposed double standard are some of the usual fairy tales about how Israel was started by 'terrorists' who operated against the British .

It's high time to demolish this horse manure.

What's going on between Iran and Israel is a war between two sovereign states, plain and simple. Ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979, that regime has been quite open about being in a state of war against Israel and seeking its destruction. For that matter, they feel the same way about the United States.

Along with targeting the US military in operations like the Khobar Towers, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and numerous operations either directly by Iran's military or its proxies against US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians have also sponsored plenty of terrorism aimed explicitly against civilians and strictly civilian facilities, including sponsoring and training 'Palestinian' homicide bombers, attacking the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires and aiding and abetting the 9/11 hijackers.

If the Israelis are involved - and there's no direct proof they are, although it's likely - they have concentrated specifically on military installations and figures associated with Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, weapons they could very well use to commit genocide. Whomever is targeting Iranian nuclear facilities and these scientists isn't hitting schools, pizza parlors, restaurants, community centers or any other facilities designed for civilian use. And even if they were, the Iranian practice of locating these targets near civilian facilities amounts to the use of human shields, something totally contrary to the rules of war. And just like the 'Palestinians' and Hezbollah who use the same tactics, as far as I'm concerned it makes these civilian targets fair game in wartime even if they do happen to get hit as collateral damage in a strike on military targets.

The British and the US used exactly the same standards in WWII in fighting the Nazis and the Japanese, and are using the same standards in drone warfare in Afghanistan and Pakistan. War by its nature affects civilians on each side.

The difference between Israel and its enemies like Iran is that Israel's record on going out of its way to minimize civilian casualties while targeting its enemies is uniquely good among western nations, while Iran and it's proxies are deliberately targeting civilians as a war aim - the very definition of terrorism.

That definition also applies to the way Israel's Jewish underground conducted itself while trying to push the British out of a country that was supposed have been the Jewish State by international law of long standing. The usual example cited is the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Irgun.

There are certain facts always left out of these stories.

There was an unusually high percentage of Palestine's Jews - about one third of the entire population - in uniform fighting for the allies. In contrast, the Arabs were largely pro-Nazi and the 'Palestinian' Arab leader the British appointed, Grand Mufti Haj-Amin al-Husseini was an active enemy. Not only did he translate Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' into Arabic and do a great deal to bring the Arabs over to the Nazi cause, he recruited Bosnian Muslims in Europe for Hitler's SS and collaborated with his friend Adolf Eichmann in planning a Nazi death camp for Palestine's Jews, scheduled to be situated near what is now Nablus.

In spite of all that, the British were firmly pro-Arab, to the point of being actively anti-Semitic. They halted all Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust, thus dooming millions to death at the hands of the Nazis because few other countries were wiling to take them in, including Britain. At the same time, they allowed unlimited and unrestricted Arab in-migration, especially during the war because so many Jews were in uniform that there was an actual labor shortage in Palestine. This led to atrocities like the sinking of the refugee ship SS Struma in 1942, which was towed by Turkish authorities to the middle of the Black Sea and left there to founder with a disabled engine after the British refused to admit its refugee passengers to Palestine. 768 people were drowned, including more than one hundred children.

In 1946 when the King David Hotel was bombed, the British were still turning away every Jewish refugee they could apprehend. Aside from operating what amounted to concentration camps of their own on the nearby Island of Cyprus, the British also sent a number of refugees by ship back to some of the very camps they'd just been liberated from.

The British also did little to quell Arab violence against Jews, while at the same time taking active steps to disarm Jews attempting to defend themselves.

The King David Hotel was Britain's military headquarters and the site of the central offices of the British Mandatory Authority in Palestine. The southern wing of the hotel where the attack was concentrated also housed British Intelligence, including files used against the Jewish resistance groups.

Aside from the fact this was definitely a military target, it's a matter of historical record that several phone calls were made to the British a half hour before warning them of the imminent bombing by the Irgun which is a funny way for 'terrorists' to act. The phone calls were dismissed by the British as hoaxes and no evacuation was done, with the result that 91 people, some of them civilian employees of the Mandatory government were killed.

In view of what goes by nowadays without being labeled terrorism, labeling the Irgun's act against the King David Hotel with the 'T' word is obviously a sign of an extremely obvious agenda.