Terrorism. This is a word that we hear a lot and we've heard about it a lot since the current round of horror began on October 7th

and I say current round because clearly what we're all seeing didn't begin on the 7th of October.

Now terrorism is a term that is supposedly only to be applied to lights of Hamas and for example the atrocities that it committed against innocent civilians back on October 7th.

Now we may have watched perhaps here's Morgan, her angry Jamie Corbyn about whether Hamas are terrorists.

Well, I'm going to explain why I think Israel is also guilty of terrorism but terrorism on a grand scale and how that should be an absolutely focal point of this whole discussion.

Now I usually avoid using the term terrorism amidst all of this because it's so ideological and contested,

I tend to use terms like war crimes and crimes, crimes against humanity which are easy to define under international law and can be alleged against any entity,

whatever its form, however big, however small, whether it's a state which claims to be democratic or one that's clearly a dictatorship,

whether it's a guerrilla force or paramilitary force or terrorist organization.

And the thing with terrorism is it offers a means for states which are themselves guilty of using huge violence against civilians to achieve political goals to declare that their violence is legitimate.

Their violence is moral but the violence of others is illegitimate any moral.

Now we all know of course the famous adage one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

The African National Congress were famously considered a terrorist organization during the anti apartheid struggle.

There's an important caveat there should be noted that over the space of eight years between 1976 and 1984 the ANC's paramilitary wing killed a total of 71 people,

52 of whom were civilians and 19 were security force members.

They apologized for these deaths after apartheid fell, clearly you can't just lump that in with what happened on October 7th.

But as for Hamas today, the BBC and other broadcasters don't call them terrorists which has caused widespread controversy.

Partly because it means taking a part of you which would compromise their reporting but it would also place BBC reporters at risk.

Their ability to report on Palestine would be compromised and indeed endangered.

But it also would open a kind of worms because clearly a lot of people, myself included, would argue for consistency what about Israel.

So now if we use for example the definition of the UK terrorism act of 2000.

Terrorism is the use or threat of one or more of certain actions as either influence the government or an international government or intimidate the public.

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