Terrorism and other radical movements seek to replace the status quo with a drastically better system.

Terrorism differs from them only in that violence is its only 'liberation' weapon. For a dyed-in-the-wool terror group, no holds are barred.

But the Narodniks of 19th-century Russia are the only modern terrorist movement to have proffered a theoretical underpinning for violence.

As the name indicates narodnik implies 'popular' theirs was 'excitative terror', a means of whipping up mass emotions into what Frantz Fanon called a"cathartic" break with the past.

Terrorism was action by such expendables as Palestine's suicide bombers designed to provoke the populace into spontaneous 'revolutionary' activity.

If you bombed enough homes, schools, churches, hospitals, offices, industries, bridges and hotels, it would 'excite' the mass into such an upheaval the dreaded Tsar would never quell it.

But wasn't the worker already being 'excited' enough by torturous workplace conditions? If revolution meant destroying everything, what would be the spoils?

A theory can be tested only by putting it to work a revolutionary theory, only in the laboratory of real movement. Histrionics by individual leaders has never liberated anybody.

Subjective make-up

True, the term 'terrorism' depends on one's subjective make-up. The verbal contexts in which we find it have become increasingly unacceptable by their Eurocentrism.

If, for a Nyeri peasant, the Mau Mau were liberators, for an Anthony J Covington on whose view of history all of us have so far had to rely they were diabolical terrorists.

So Euro-Judaeo-Christianity's propaganda has long convinced us, even in Africa, that Joshua who slaughtered millions of our own Canaanite siblings was a "prophet of the Lord", not one of history's most horrendous murderers.

Yet the line cannot be so rigid. For, in truth, Dedan Kimathi, Spartacus, Wat Tyler, Thomas Munzer, Toussaint L'Ouverture, George Washington and others were liberators and yet terrorists.

Since no state can exist without the various wings of the armed forces, the status quo can be defined as violence solidified. Therefore, you cannot wrench yourself free of it except violently.

If so, terrorism's causes national and international injustice (real or imagined ) are worldwide and know no race. So why do most of us equate terrorism with the Arabs and Islam? Is it because the Middle East is its epicentre?

But that is simply untrue. What about Uruguay's Tupamaros, America's Black Panthers, Germany's Baader-Meinhof, Italy's Red Brigades, Britain's IRA, Spain's Eta, Chechnya, Longowal Singh?

Victimisation of Jews

The Jews themselves (whose Zionist wing now connives in this anti-Arab injustice) have been some of the most pathetic victims of this Eurocentrism. As scions of Joshua's Israel, they would suffer untold humiliation under the Macedonians and the Romans.

Even as European proselytes, they would undergo 2,000 years of the cruellest pogroms, mass expulsions, genocides, opprobrium and the Nazi hecatomb in which lie six million.

But they have not always taken it lying down. From the Hasmoneans through Judas of Galilee to Simeon bar-Kocheba, they have taken arms and valiantly challenged the foreign oppressors.

In the Jewish War, Flavius Josephus depicts the incredible fearlessness with which the Zelotes, Lestai, Kananaios and Sicarii (Iscariots) faced Rome. By 33 AD, three of their leaders Simon Magus, Judas Sicarii and Yehoshua Mashiach (better known as Jesus Christ) had been crucified for treason against Titus and, by 74 AD, Jerusalem, Jotapata and Masada lay in ruins.

Note that the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians exactly what Hitler did to Europe's Jews and the Romans to the Judeans. But more relevant here is that the Judaean terrorism failed miserably and for three reasons typical of all terrorism.

Individual heroism expresses only mass contempt. Terrorism attacks with much cruder weapons than the system's.

The enemy's security system is such that terrorists bombs hit the poor hardest. That's why Osama bin Laden's cause is futile. GVNN/The Nation