Saturday, January 10, 2015

When Western bombs kill and when terrorist bombs kill: rules of discourse

When terrorists hit in Western capitals, we are told: there is no room for analysis or for talk or of contextualization because if you do any of that you are a terrorist yourself. And if you say that the persistence of the Palestinian problem has radicalized people in the region, you are a terrorist yourself.
But if you mention American and Western bombs in the Middle East, or if you mention Abu Ghraib, or if you mention persistent Israeli terrorism and war crimes, you are told: you can only talk about the context of those events, and if you don't, you are--you guessed it--a terrorist yourself.