7. Letters to the Editor in Response to The War of the Words

Following is a series of letters to Daniel Okrent in response to his article “The War of the Words.”

Re “The War of the Words: A Dispatch from the Front Lines” (March 6):

The right definition of terrorism is “acts of war by nongovernmental organizations.” But the fact that this is the only definition that matches both intent and usage is irrelevant. “Terrorism” has no agreed-upon definition. We should therefore drop the use of the term. Palestinian bus bombers should be called “bus bombers.” Hamas should be called a “quasi-military group.” The attack on New York and Washington by Al Qaeda should be called an “attack.”

—Warren Seltzer, Jerusalem, March 6, 2005

You write: “The deadly October 2000 assault on the American destroyer Cole or the devastating suicide bomb that killed 18 American soldiers and 4 Iraqis in Mosul last December may have been heinous, but these were acts of war, not terrorism.”

The bombing of the Cole was an “act of war”? Isn’t war a conflict between legitimate governments, adhering to certain universally agreed-upon “rules”? As far as I know, no government declared war against the United States by attacking the Cole, just as no government declared war by attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

—Cathleen Medwick, Somers, N.Y., March 6, 2005

Supporters of Israel’s policies have long dominated this war of words in the American news media. Otherwise, you and your colleagues might be debating whether to use “settlers” or “colonists” for the inhabitants of Israeli enclaves in the occupied territories: the former implies that they moved into uninhabited territory; the latter that someone else might already have been living there. Use of “colonists” brings charges of anti-Semitism, however, while “settlers,” which is at least equally partisan, is widely treated as a neutral descriptive term.

Journalists at the New York Times will never satisfy everyone when writing about the Middle East. But trying not to ruffle feathers should take a back seat to accuracy and clarity.

—Robert Dimit, New York, March 6, 2005

Regarding the phrasing “Israel-Palestine conflict,” you write, “I’ve heard from ardent Zionists who deplore this usage because they say, ‘There is no Palestine.’” You failed to mention that most Palestinians, and other Arabs for that matter, say, “There is no Israel.”

—Shlomo Singer, New York, March 6, 2005

You call terrorism “an act of political violence committed against purely civilian targets.” By this definition the British and American bombing of Dresden was terrorism, as was the fire-bombing of Tokyo and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Almost no one argues there was military value to these targets.) These were attacks meant to change people’s minds by invoking fear. The same can be said for the German attacks on London, which were clearly aimed at the will of the British people. And, if you accept the argument that these attacks were military because they forced the diversion of military forces to stop them, then any civilian attack becomes a military one.

—John A. Kroll, Tarpon Springs, Fla., March 6, 2005

Terrorism is the intentional harming of innocent civilians for political purposes. The Times should have the courage to use this term correctly, consistently and as often (or seldom) as the facts require. Let the political chips fall where they may.

—John Tomasi, Providence, March 6, 2005

The writer is an associate professor of political science at Brown University.