samizdat

The claim to an identity has had exceptionally grave consequences. There are fundamental differences between al-Qaeda and Hamas, between the Taliban and the Palestinian Authority, but the rhetorical fusion of America’s “September 11” and Israel’s
“December 2” has given Bush and Sharon carte blanche to erase them. As a result, “terrorism” has been made polymorphous. Without defined shape or determinate roots, its mantle can be cast over any form of resistance to sovereign power. This has allowed the Sharon regime to advance its colonial project not through appeals to Zionism alone, to the Messianic mission of “redeeming” the biblical heartlands of Judea and Samaria (though this has by no means lost its ideological force), but also – crucially for its international constituency – as another front in a generalised, rationalised “war on terrorism”. This has in turn sustained the deception, so assiduously fostered by right- wing ideologues, that terrorism can be suppressed without reference to the historico- geographical conditions that frame it.

Derek Gregory (2003) “Defiled Cities,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 24 (3)