(source: Al Jazeera)
When Israeli commandos killed nine mostly Turkish activists during a raid on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians last May, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the attack as a prime example of “state terrorism”. “Even tyrants, bandits and pirates have their own rules of ethics,” he said, but not terrorists killing on behalf of a UN member state.
And when several internationally renowned artists, including the rock band Pixies and British rocker Elvis Costello, responded by cancelling scheduled concerts in Tel Aviv, Shuki Weiss, one of Israel’s leading promoters, called the growing boycott movement “cultural terrorism”.
“Music and politics should not mix,” he said, even as the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was picking up steam.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a UN Ad Hoc Committee to Eliminate Terrorism, created by the General Assembly back in December 1996, has remained deadlocked as it tries to reach agreement on a comprehensive draft convention to eliminate terrorism. Last month, it made another unsuccessful effort at drawing a distinction between “freedom fighters” and “state sponsored terrorism”.
“One knows terrorism when one sees it,” said Ambassador Palitha Kohona of Sri Lanka, a former chief of the UN Treaty Section. The draft convention, tabled in 2001 by India, has won agreement by several delegations to a substantial extent. However, it is bogged down on a few crucial issues. For example, it has been proposed by some that state sponsored terrorism or certain acts of states be covered by the draft, Kohona said.
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