Not all people are terrorists but all terrorists are people. Is that possibly what Daniel Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, meant to say at a luncheon speech this week at the annual American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in Washington, D.C.? Not exactly, stated Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. According to Milbank, Gillerman said in front of countless administration officials, half of the US Senate, one fourth of the US House and endless media representatives and official delegates, “While it may be true — and probably is — that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslims.”

This doubly demeaning statement can be tracked, traced and googled all across the Internet. And Israeli politicians and their American supporters seem to be in the forefront in the use of this phrase. Let’s look more closely at this clever use of words and their meaning and origins.

Most of us studied logic sometime in our school years. When we come upon the concept of logic , we were eventually presented with a term of logic that most of us have long since forgotten referred to as a “syllogism.” Basically the term syllogism refers to a major premise and a minor premise from which we draw conclusions. Syllogisms can be manipulated and tinkered with to say almost anything whether true or not. And the Israelis and their friends are masters of the art of “wordsmithing” or tailoring the language to fit their needs. Gillerman gave us a good dose of this technique with his “not all Muslims are terrorists” and “almost all terrorists are Muslims” statements. There are a lot of holes in his logic such as what does “almost all” mean? Is it 51 percent or 2/3 or 95 percent. And what about the term “terrorist”?

Let’s look at the term “terrorist.” As this columnist has previously stated, the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” have either no agreed-upon definition or various definitions according to the source. Daily one can hear government spokesman as well as leading members of both the Democratic and Republican parties invoking concern about the “war on terrorism”. Yet the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism stated: “The subcommittee has found that practically every agency in the United States government with a counterterrorism mission uses a different definition of terrorism. Without a standard definition, terrorism might be treated no differently than other crimes”.

So how do we fight the “terrorists” or “terrorism” when we can’t even agree on what the terms mean? One might use the classic argument, “Even if you can’t define terrorism, you know it when you see it”. But should that interpretation allow us to start real wars and arrest individuals and hold them without trials?

Interestingly, the standard American definition of terrorism is a shift from the original meaning of the word. The Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism as “government by intimidation”. Presently, it usually refers to intimidation of governments.

The first recorded use of the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” was in reference to the “Reign of Terror” by the French government in 1795. However the term “terrorist” was not used in an anti-government sense until 1866 (pertaining to Ireland) and 1883 (pertaining to Russia).

In 1981, the United Nations was being pressed by the Reagan administration to take a stronger stand against terrorism. The US vice president at that time, George Bush stated: “The UN must be heard and heard loudly in its condemnation of terrorism.” Bush had been the chief US delegate to the United Nations in 1972 when the Nixon administration launched a campaign for the adoption of an international treaty against the spread of terrorism beyond immediate areas of conflict.

That initiative followed a terrorist attack during Munich Summer Olympic Games that claimed 17 lives including 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team and 5 Palestinian commandos.

The General Assembly that year came up with an Ad Hoc Committee on International Terrorism but that committee was phased out in six years as the delegates could never agree on a common definition of “terrorism”. One would constantly hear then, and still hears today the phrase, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. And in September of 2006, The UN tried but again could not come to any agreement on the definition of “terrorist” or “terrorism.”

So where did the current emphasis on “terrorists” and “terrorism” receive its impetus?

Let’s go back to the 1972 Olympics and the fallout from the death of the 11 Israeli Olympic team members. Shortly after that incident, we begin to see the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” appearing more frequently in the media. You also found commentators and academics being referred to as “terrorism experts”. And many of these experts were either Israelis or pro-Israeli partisans. The real watershed in the “terrorism business” came after the June 1976 Israeli commando raid to free hostages in Entebbe, Uganda. The raid was led by Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of former Israeli prime minister and Likud party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. Jonathan Netanyahu died in that raid and his brother has never forgotten him.

Benjamin Netanyahu founded the Jonathan Institute, named after his deceased brother, which focused on terrorism and the war on terrorism. In 1986, through the Jonathan Institute and after series of conferences focusing on terrorism, Netanyahu published a book titled, “Terrorism: How the West Can Win”.

The book also generated a Time Magazine special issue that focused on terrorism. In that book and in the Time Magazine article, Netanyahu equated terrorism with Marxism and “radical Islam”. He gave the distinction to the PLO as being the “godfather “ of terrorism and attempted to point out the ties between the PLO and Marxism.

He stated that this coalition was against all democracies and said that terrorism could only be stopped through “getting tough” and not through any form of diplomacy or, by inference, dealing with the causes.

So the Israeli wordsmiths define terrorism for us, give us a lesson in their logic and defame one fifth of humanity, the Muslims in the process.

You might like to try the syllogism game also with phrases like “Not all Christians are Americans, but almost all Americans are Christians” or “Not all Jews are Hebrew speakers, but almost all Hebrew speakers are Jews.” Or did you know that there is a breed of cat called a Sphynx that is hairless, therefore, “Not all furry animals are cats, but almost all cats are furry animals.”