Hamas: The Efficacy of Terrorism?
It is responses to non-state terrorism, rather than the brutal violence itself, which has tended to change history and politics the most, says Professor Richard English.
After the 7 October 2023 attack in Israel, the BBC was strongly criticized for not referring to Hamas militants as ‘terrorists’. The ‘T’ word clearly carries with it a powerful pejorative punch, hence the Corporation’s instinctive preference for avoiding it in such contexts.
But does scholarship on non-state terrorism help us to answer one of the central issues at stake when considering the shocking October attack and its terrible aftermath of ongoing suffering: namely, how far such actions actually work in advancing their practitioners’ goals?
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