read and respond to each person. please make each response mod 1
-Sean Ruane Hoffman’s definition of terrorism consists of five main points that are necessary for an incident to be considered terrorism and not just a crime.
The incident must be:
politically motivated,
Violent or there must be a threat of violence,
Designed to spread fear and that fear needs to spread and have impact beyond the immediate area of the attack,
Conducted by a group with a chain of command or by individuals that are linked to the ideology of an extremist group or its leader, The perpetrators must be a subnational group or nonstate entity,
This is a good definition overall, but I do disagree with Hoffman’s idea that a lone wolf can not be a terrorist. Although Sirhan Sirhan was not affiliated with any terrorist organization, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was political in nature and had an impact far beyond a local story. Sirhan Sirhan’s actions had a bigger impact then the actions of most terrorist groups at that time and probably inspired recruitment for these terrorist groups.
Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, had a 17-year anti-technology terror campaign that killed or injured dozens of people. Kaczynski was not affiliated with any extremist groups or ideological leaders. And like Sirhan Sirhan, Kaczynski was not looking for money, he was attempting to stop the development of technology to save the world. It seems to me that both Sirhan Sirhan and Ted Kaczynski acted in the fundamentally altruistic manner that Hoffman said a terrorist does. I feel that Ganor has a better definition of terrorism. Ganor’s definition states, “the intentional use of, or threat to use, violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims”. His definition has three important elements:
Violence or the threat of violence must be there, or it is not terrorism (non-violent protests and demonstrations are not terrorism)
There must be a political aim to the violent activity, or the violence is just crime and not terrorism
The targets of the terrorism must be civilian.
Ganor has defined terrorism and created a way of distinguishing terrorism from other crimes and from an insurgency. This definition helps separate the terrorist from the criminal and the freedom fighter. mod 2
-Bianca Gala A condition that Crenshaw mentions that lead to terrorist attacks is the governments’ ignorance of the importance of prevention tactics in lieu of terrorism. If 9/11 didn’t happen, the Department of Homeland Security would have never become a thing and terrorism wouldn’t be taken seriously. If we look at the attack on 9/11, terrorists boarded a plane just like every other citizen on the plane and hijacked it to carry out the devastating tragedy. Due to how lenient security was within the airports, the terrorists had no problem boardings the flight and taking control of the plane. Also, we need to take into consideration how much of an advantage terrorists do have on an airplane. There is no one coming over 30,000 feet in the air to anyones’ rescue. There is no calling for security or backup, without strategic prevention tactics put into place to assure that terrorists aren’t boarding the plane, the government is asking for an attack at that point.
Another condition that Crenshaw mentions is grievances amongst an identifiable subgroup. Terrorism once again is simply action taken by people to send a political message. Crenshaw specifically even states that the victims or objects of the attack have no value to the attackers, but the large human audience reaction is what the terrorists are going for. For example, in 2013 Christopher Dorner went on a killing spree targeting solely police officers and their families in South Carolina. Dorner’s motive for the killing spree was in response to the police brutality that was occurring. While looking at this case, Dorner did not have any direct relation with any of the officers who were killed. It was random and the officers’ and their families had absolutely no value to him. His goal for the shooting was to get a reaction from the government for there to be a change within the department and an end to the brutality that had been occurring. This was a poor and psychotic way of going about bringing change to police brutality, but this example serves as a terrorist attack.
mod 3
– Kathy Pocztarski Menachem Begin, who was involved in Zionist politics, became the leader of the Zionist terrorist group known as Irgun. The Irgun’s plan was not necessarily to defeat Britain militarily, but rather, use terroristic violence to undermine and weaken the government’s power and control of Palestine by striking at symbols of British rule (50). Looking at one of Irgun’s most infamous operation was the bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel; in July 1946. The King David Hotel was the center of British Rule in Palestine, where the headquarters of British military forces and government secretariat were housed. I related this attack to our previous modules on symbolism, and how terrorism serves to send a far-reaching message and impose psychological impacts rather than focusing on the terroristic act itself. The King David Hotel bombing was significant in the sense that it was not about the attack on the hotel or the people in it, but rather the offices that pose as a form of symbolic violence. In addition, we also talked about how terrorist actions are part of a “reasonable and rational” decision making process and are not simply results of insanity. Even though we may argue that it is not reasonable, in a terrorist’s views and decision-making processes, they truly believe that they are forming logically based responses to their actions. Irgun’s main goal was to attract the world’s attention on the issues and group’s struggle in Palestine. Hoffman (2017) makes a great point in discussing how the war was not based on numbers or the casualties inflicted, but rather, on the psychological impact that Begin aimed to pose (52). Thinking about terrorism as political theatre, an integral part of the Irgun strategy was to use dramatic acts of violence to attract international attention to Palestine and publicize the Zionist’s grievances against Britain and their claims for statehood (52). Similarly to Menachem Begin, Grivas also aimed to attract international attention on the issue in Cyprus and its demand for unification with Greece in a way that focus on well-orchestrated acts of violence (56).
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-Sean Ruane appeared first on Homeworkassisters.