One of the most shocking moments of Jordi Évole's interview with Josu Ternera (
Don't Call Me Ternera,
on Netflix) comes when the ETA leader expresses his horror at the 11-M jihadist attacks in Madrid, or those in Paris, London or Syria.
That is terrorism, he says.
“They are going boldly!”
Because Al Qaeda or ISIS wanted there to be civilian victims, the more the better, while what ETA did he describes as the “consequence of an analysis”, as if they were those who measure cholesterol.
The fact that ETA had also killed indiscriminately (in Hipercor or in Zaragoza) does not remove José Antonio Urrutikoetxea from his speech.
He does not say it in the documentary (disturbing, illuminating, valuable), but it is sensed: the brutality of the Islamist crimes of the first two thousand years influenced the surrender of the ETA members, already cornered and lacking support.
Some terrorists did not like to see themselves in the mirror of others.
In the leaden years, when ETA often murdered, no one thought of describing street revolts as terrorism, no matter how frequent they were in times of industrial reconversion.
There were some really bad ones: the Hunosa miners threw sticks of dynamite at the riot police;
The protests in the shipyards or the steel industry were no more peaceful.
This was not called terrorism (even though there were other crimes that could be prosecuted) because it was well known what terrorism was and it hurt.
Now that memory is worse, they insist on looking for traces of terrorism in the
process
, which was an attack on the law and a deception on their own, yes, but killing did not kill.
Pretending that all violence is terrorism, twisting the concept for political use, may not maintain the respect due to the victims of authentic terrorism, which kills deliberately, in the expression of the person who commanded the gunmen.
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