Terrorism and Violence: A misconception Terrorism and Violence: A misconception

Terrorism and Violence: A misconception

Terrorism and violence are the two words that are often used to portray a violent act against humanity in the world. These words look to have same meaning but they are often misunderstood by people of different countries and different religions. You can use terrorism and violence as you like. Violence is used to describe crimes and killings in the west but terrorism is used for eastern countries.

What is Violence??

Violence, an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm. The damage inflicted by violence may be physical, psychological, or both. Violence may be distinguished from aggression, a more general type of hostile behavior that may be physical, verbal, or passive in nature.
Violence itself is a soft word that depict a certain type of behavior of human nature rather than terrorism which is a harsh word to be honest.


Violence can be categorized in a number of ways. Violent crimes are typically divided into four main categories, based on the nature of the behavior: homicide (the killing of one human being by another, sometimes for legally justifiable reasons), assault (physically attacking another person with the intent to cause harm), robbery (forcibly taking something from another person), and rape (forcible sexual intercourse with another person). Other forms of violence overlap with these categories, such as child sexual abuse (engaging in sexual acts with a child) and domestic violence (violent behavior between relatives, usually spouses).

What is Terrorism??

Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government or its citizens to further certain political or social objectives. 

Law enforcement generally recognizes two types of terrorism: domestic and international. Domestic terrorism is based and executed by a state own citizens without foreign direction. International terrorism, which is connected to foreign governments or groups, transcends nation’s boundaries.

The Misconception:

The misconception is caused often by media while reporting these violent acts all over the world. Media has a great impact on the people of whole world. Media uses both terrorism and violence words as they like. 

'Killings by US citizens are often referred as violent acts but killings in Muslim countries are described as terrorism'
According to npr.org

"There Have Been, On Average, 10 Mass Shootings In The U.S. Each Week This Year"


So this shows that US citizens are as violent as other countries but these attacks are not shown as terrorism acts but acts of violence.

Misconception in Gaza-Israel conflict:
In recent turn of events Israel-Palestine conflict is a major issue that caused this misconception about terrorism and violence. As details of this conflict were discussed in my previous article.


When this conflict started Israel unlawfully attacked citizens of Palestine while they were offering prayers and innocent people by giving reason that they attacked militant group Hamas. This development was reported by Muslim media groups as violent acts of Israel towards Muslims of Palestine. After news started to broke out western media startedefending Israel by portraying the story as Israel have done this in the name of self defense. Then the situation escalated and Hamas in return fired rockets on Israel. Israel started bombing Gaza and killed hundreds of innocent people andestroyed their houses. Media described Hamas attacks as terrorism and Israel attacks as retaliation. Unarmed Palestinians were portrayed as aggressors and Israeli forces as defenders.

According to New York Times:
 

"Israel carried out more airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, where the death toll rose on Thursday to 83 people since the fighting began early this week, according to the Gaza health ministry. Palestinian militants fired volleys of rockets from Gaza — some 1,800 in three days — that reached far into Israel, where seven have died since Monday.

Early Friday, Israel added ground forces to its assault on Gaza, an escalation of the violence"

As you can see NYT is reporting the terrorist acts of Israel as violence in their reporting. The New York Times are doing their best to stay neutral, albeit hinting on their social media captions of "Gaza militants" firing rockets followed by Israeli retaliation, portraying that Israel have carried out retaliation after militant attacks. A recent New York Post tweet claimed that Hamas militant airstrikes killed 20 in Israel, completely spinning the truth on its head. The tweet has been deleted amid backlash. 

Western media is always under great pressure while discussing the Israel Palestine issue due to deep pockets or heavy funding by Israel to media groups. So they call Palestinians as terrorists but not Israelis.

"The mainstream media focus is always on Palestinian reaction and not on Israeli action and it insinuates that Palestinians are on the offence when in fact they are on the defense"

The May 11 Reuters coverage, titled "Palestinian rocket fire, Israeli strikes in Gaza run into second day" suggests that the Israeli strikes were meant "as a response" to "Palestinian" rocket fires raining down on Israel.

Palestinians usually get mainstream Western media coverage when they are either protesting or physically confronting Israeli aggression, with their outcry broadly colored as "escalation of violence". Historically, however, there seemed to be no escalation of violence when Israel increases night raids on Palestinian homes or Israeli settlers attack Palestinian farmers.

Western media has become an actor in all of this situation as they kept focusing on 5 people killed in Israel rather then covering situation of both sides. According to this media 

"People in Israel were killed because of terrorism but people that were killed by Palestine were killed by violence of Israel

Moreover Israel destroyed Al Jazeera and American media house building by air strike completely but no one battered an eye in this act of terrorism and western media didn't even bothered to raise such a big issue of attack on media itself.

So according to above mentionedefinition of terrorism the biggest terrorist is USA itself. USA supportejihads in Afghanistan as they gave militants weapons and power to use them against USSR

USA was involved in training militants in Pakistan and sending them in Afghanistan to fight against soviet forces and that is the biggest truth from which western media can never hide. USA was heavily involved in terrorism. After these militants defeate soviet forces in Afghanistan western media started calling those friends or partners of USA as terrorists. They started a campaign against these militants after using them and blamed Pakistan as source of terrorism.

The bottom line is Western media portrays acts of powerful nations like US, Israel as violence and conflicts of Muslims or Arabs as terrorism.

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