STATE TERRORISM AND ITS SPONSOR: THE ISRAELI WAR IN THE GAZA STRIP

One of the identified weaknesses of orthodox/traditional terrorism by the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) is that, it has limited the perpetrators of terrorist acts to non-state actors. CTS argues that there is no deontological reason which precludes an actor, state or non-state from engaging in acts of terrorism as part of a broader political strategy; therefore, state terrorism is more of devastating eventuality as terrorism itself. The human rights implications of Hamas attacks against the state of Israel and her civilians on the 7th of October, 2023 are conventionally considered as terrorist attacks and consequently, this research argues that the consequential outcomes of Israeli reprisal attacks in Gaza are also nothing short of criminalized terrorist attacks (state terrorism) within the broader theoretical propositions of CTS. Based mainly on secondary data and qualitative research methods, this research classifies the gruesome human rights violations that emanated from Israeli reprisal attacks in Gaza as a crime of state terrorism, and the various military assistance of the U.S to aid the Israeli war in Gaza put the United States in the position of a sponsor of state terrorism