The news each day now is filled with talk of the Palestinian “terrorists” in the Middle East who have killed more Israelis. Much of the news media appear to slant the news to make us feel hatred toward the terrorists and sympathy for the state of Israel, which is cast in the thinking of many Americans as the good guys. But are they really the good guys? And what does it really mean to call the Palestinians terrorists? What is a terrorist?

A quick look at history might be instructive.

Some who saw the movie “Braveheart” knew that it depicted, with some Hollywood elaboration, the life of a 13th-century Scottish hero-patriot named William Wallace. Wallace, who was fighting to free Scotland of English oppression, was considered a terrorist by the English and was eventually brutally executed as a traitor by Edward I, then king of England.

During the American Revolution, an organization known as the Sons of Liberty participated in a number of events, such as the Boston Tea Party, which labeled them as patriots by many of the American colonists, but as traitors (terrorists) by the British. Even John Adams, our second president, was considered by the British to be a traitor, subject to being hanged if caught. There were others who might well have been considered terrorists by the British, such as Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox” of the South during the Revolution.

During our civil war, John Mosby and his rangers were heroes of the South for their guerrilla raids creating terror among Union armies, but were obviously considered traitors in the North.

In 1919-1920, Irish nationalists fought a savage war against their British oppressors, which resulted in the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. Here again, the nationalists were terrorists to the British, but patriots to the Irish who wanted their homeland free of English domination.

When the German Wehrmacht invaded Yugoslavia during World War II, they encountered a terrorist-patriot, Gen. Mihailovic, who was a hero to the Slavs but would have been executed had he been caught by the Germans.

In 1917, the British promised to further the quest for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which had been an Arab nation for almost 1,000 years.

When the Jewish settlers in Palestine began fighting the Palestinians and the British in 1947 to create a homeland from lands taken from the Palestinians, they were led by Menachem Begin, who was a terrorist in the eyes of the British. Yet this “terrorist” went on to become prime minister of the state of Israel and to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

So, as someone once said, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Why do people resort to terrorist acts? Some do it as a result of radical ideals, religious or otherwise. Some, like al-Qaida, do it out of what might be generally perceived as a kind of political madness, the desire to destroy something they either envy or hate.

But others do it out of sheer desperation. Others use terrorism as the only weapon they have against bullying aggression. We saw this in Budapest a few years ago when Soviet tanks invaded Hungary to support the struggling Communist Party against local patriots (“terrorists”). While it is difficult to justify the bombings that kill innocent Israelis, is that really any more abhorrent than the destruction of whole Palestinian villages by Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships with no regard for the safety of Palestinian men, women and children who are not involved in terrorism?

And we are seeing it day after day in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinians, desperate to stop the Israeli incursions into the homelands of Palestinians, fight back with the only weapons they have. We watch as the news on television brings us live footage of the Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolishing Palestinian homes and villages and farms. Before the struggle escalated to its present levels, we often saw on our screens views of Palestinian children being shot by Israeli soldiers for throwing rocks.

Palestine has no army to repel the malicious and continuing invasion of their territory by the Israeli settlers, backed up by their modern-day wehrmacht, the Israeli tanks. We have watched as those tanks moved through streets and alleyways, destroying everything in their path with no concern to the cost of their actions on Palestinian residents. We have watched as the Israeli soldiers shot at anything moving in front of them, including on several occasions, newsmen.

We have seen the numbers coming out of the struggle, the one-sided tallies of the dead – approximately 10 Palestinian men, women and children killed for every Israeli death.

We have watched the beginning of what may well be a new Holocaust, a systematic extermination of the Palestinian people by their democratic neighbor, Israel.

We have watched as our government has supported this aggressive behavior, has provided the tanks and guns and the money to further Israel’s attempt to choke the life out of the Palestinian people.

And we have done nothing. We have condoned this malevolent behavior as we – and the Europeans – did the same behavior of Hitler’s armies as they invaded and crushed first Poland and then other European countries, each doing nothing until they were placed at peril by the expansionist land grab of the Nazi government.

One step in the right direction has been made during the last decade when we and other nations, acting through the United Nations, intervened in Bosnia and elsewhere when brutal conflicts erupted over land or religion. The record of the United States has been admirable in committing money and people to halt genocide wherever it has erupted, except in the Middle East.

One might well ask why we have responded inconsistently in this case. Our rationale that Israel is a democracy does not wash when its tactics echo those of the “democratically” elected governments of other peoples who have murdered their neighbors.

We seem to be ignoring that concern for human rights today in the Middle East. We stand by watching as the Palestinians, an Arab nation, is slowly demolished. We assume, apparently, that the other Arab nations will not act against us. That may be a bad bet. With 64 percent of our oil coming from overseas, much of it from Arab countries, we may indeed be punished for our inaction.

That is reason enough to act. But there is a better reason. We say to the world that we believe in human rights, yet we stand by as human rights in Palestine are violated, day after day. We watch as people’s livelihood is taken away from them, as they are increasingly fenced in, prevented from traveling freely through their land by the Israeli bullies and their leader, Ariel Sharon.

We must act, before it is too late. There may not be much time left to demonstrate that, as a nation, we really do believe that the rights of all people are important.

James Williamson of Lincolnville is a retired senior research scientist and a descendant of Scottish Highlanders.