'One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter'
Often repeated, this is one of those sayings that cry out for logical and philosophical analysis. Competent analysis will show that clear-thinking persons ought to avoid the saying. Note first that while freedom is an end, terror is a mean. So to call a combatant a terrorist is to say something about his tactics, his means for achieving his ends, while to call a combatant a freedom fighter is to say nothing about his tactics or means for achieving his ends. It follows that one and the same combatant can be both a terrorist and a freedom fighter. For one and the same person can employ terror as his means while having freedom as his end. Suppose a Palestinian Arab jihadi straps on an explosive belt and detonates himself in a Tel Aviv pizza parlor. He is objectively a terrorist: he kills and maims noncombatants in furtherance of a political agenda which includes freedom from Israeli occupation. The fact that he is a freedom fighter does not make him any less a terrorist. Freedom is his end, but terror is his mean. Another Palestinian renounces terrorism and fights for freedom from occupation by the path of negotiation. He is objectively a freedom fighter and objectively no terrorist. A third case might be an Israeli terrorist who blows up a Palestinian hospital or mosque in revenge for Palestinian terrorist attacks. He is objectively a terrorist but objectively not a freedom fighter. But what is a terrorist? I suggest that the following are all individually necessary conditions for a combatant's being a terrorist; whether they are jointly sufficient I leave undecided. 'Terrorist' is used by different people in different ways. My concern is how we ought to use the term if we intend to think clearly about the phenomenon of terrorism and keep it distinct from other phenomena in the vicinity. A terrorist is neither a criminal nor a warrior; a terrorist act is neither a criminal act nor an act of war; a...