Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

lvi • INTRODUCTIONThat is, as a result of the large-scale introduction of jet aircraft intointernational travel and the proliferation of television, both in the 1960s,terrorists could literally strike at global targets of opportunity in a matterof hours and force their message upon a mass audience undreamedof by their most dedicated and skillful predecessors. Moreover, their objectivemight not be the seizure of territorial power but rather regionalor even global destabilization. Faced with this challenge, authoritieswere forced to recognize that traditional means of prevention and controlof terrorism appropriate within a specifically identifiable strife zonewould not be effective against those who might be many thousandsof miles away from their intended target. Nonterritorial terrorists hadsomething new and deadly at their disposal: an intercontinental deliverymissile rivaling the missiles of mass destruction that, fortunately, werenever employed in any general war.THE HISTORICAL DIMENSIONSDespite these innovations and the emphasis on contemporary terrorismbeing, as one authority deemed it, “a new mode of conflict,” 10 terrorismactually comes from an ancient tradition. As one author notes, “We tendto think of political terrorism as a modern development. . . . But theterrorizing of humans by fellow humans on political or political-ethnicgrounds goes much further back, in many forms. As a missionary inBurundi sadly said about the massacre of 10,000 Hutu tribesmen by theruling Tutsi in 1972. . . . ‘This has been going on for centuries and willhappen again.’ ” 11The same could be said for the tragic ethnic violence in the formerrepublics of Yugoslavia and the disintegrated Soviet Union, the relentlessattacks against the tribal peoples of Sudan, and any other number ofprimordial conflicts in both industrialized and agrarian societies.In the long history of terrorism, the names of certain groups surfacerepeatedly; they share the tendency to use violence to promote andexercise their religious beliefs. The Zealots were religious nationalistsin first-century Judea who revolted against the Roman occupation. Hiddenin crowds, they would stab secular officials, priests, and soldierswith their daggers (sicarii) and then escape by merging back into thecrowds. Their actions created an environment of fear where no onewas to be trusted and everyone was feared. The Zealots pioneered the