A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of  violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious  ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear.  That’s terrorism. If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is  official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism.  That’s why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are  carrying out, counter-terrorism.

In December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that’s when  the furor over the plague was peaking, The United Nations General  Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning  the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight  against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country,  Honduras, abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and  Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major  resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty  much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a  reason. There was one paragraph in that long resolution which said that  nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling  against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation  to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other  states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and  Israel can’t accept that. There was another one at the time. Israel  was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US  calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving  Israel out of Lebanon.