WASHINGTON, 20 June — CNN founder Ted Turner has been hauled over the coals for suggesting a moral equivalence between Palestinian bombings directed against Israel and the Jewish state’s right to self-defense.
In an interview published yesterday in London’s Guardian newspaper, Turner accused Israel of engaging in "terrorism" against the Palestinians and, in referring to the Palestinians, called bombers "all they have."
"Right now, aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorizing each other? It looks to me like they’re both doing it."
It took a mere nanosecond for the cacophony of protests over Turner’s remarks to hit the Washington Richter scale.
"Ted Turner has been wrong about a lot of things before, but his twisted attempt to justify terrorism against Israel by establishing moral equivalence descends to new depths," Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and House Majority Whip, told journalists.
"Turner’s thoughts of the Middle East are the rant of a man with a defective moral compass."
Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, used the statement as an opportunity to correlate the 9/11 terrorist bombings with Israel: "Mr. Turner, the use of terrorism can never justified. Indeed, by your equation, the Sept. 11 attacks were legitimate since the 19 perpetrators had no other tools at their disposal in their ‘battle’ against the United States."
"When you hear a statement like that, you wonder how Ted ever got where he got," Alex Safian, spokesmen of the pro-Israel Committee on the Accuracy of Middle East Reporting told journalists.
The stinging attacks brought an immediate apology from Turner. "I regret any implication that I believe the actions taken by Israel to protect its people are equal to terrorism," he said. "…In that interview I condemned that violence on whatever side it may come. But I want to make it absolutely clear that my view was, and is, that there is a fundamental distinction between the acts of the Israeli government and the Palestinians. I believe the Israeli government has used excessive force to defend itself, but that is not the same as intentionally targeting and killing civilians with suicide bombers."
CNN was quick to put out its own statement: "Mr. Turner’s comments are his own and definitely do not reflect the views on CNN in any way."
But the aftermath left some people wondering about the uproar.
"This is nothing new," said Phyllis Benning, fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. "The question of how one defines terrorism depends on what side you’re one. To me, terrorism is any attack on any civilian, and whether that is carried out by a state using F-16’s, provided by the US, that makes it state terrorism, or suicide bombings carried out by individuals, they are both terrorism.
"It doesn’t help us stop the violence by defining terrorism," said Benning. "We need to talk about why the violence is happening. The Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom had it right when they said the occupation is killing all of us."
"I think the root of the problem is the occupation and the initial violence is the occupation and the confiscation of Palestinian land, and the building of settlements, etc," said Kathleen Christison, a former CIA political analyst and author of the just-released "Perception of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy."
"While I don’t defend any type of terrorism and certainly not the suicide bombings, I think that Israel’s violence against the civilian population of the occupied territories has to be taken into consideration when we weigh the violence on both sides."
The Israeli decision to reoccupy the West Bank "is unfortunately not a surprise," said Christison. "What is particularly discomforting is the lack of any US condemnation, and it looks as though the barrier has been moved, in a way, because the US did make a few pro forma protests in March and April (when Israel first invaded the occupied territories) but now it doesn’t appear that the US has any objection to Israel’s moves.
"Bush’s reaction is due to a combination of things. Certainly it is the elections in November and his own elections two years hence, but I believe the Christian fundamentalists and conservatives in his administration approach this problem from an extremely pro-Israeli position, and that’s where his mindset is.
"He certainly is not his father’s son. I think he has some kind of emotional attachment to Israel that this father never had. I do think that the depth of his pro-Israel position is causing chagrin around the world, but unfortunately, I don’t see any other international leaders who are going protest in a meaningful way."
