Daily Inspiration Quote by Yasser Arafat

Arafat’s line is less a moral claim than a political judo move: it tries to flip a weaponized label back onto the people using it. “Terrorist” isn’t treated here as a description of tactics; it’s framed as an insult attached to the wrong side of history. By anchoring legitimacy in “a just cause,” he smuggles in the premise that justice is self-evident and, crucially, that it outranks method. If your end is righteous, the word that condemns you becomes logically unavailable.

That’s the intent: to seize narrative control in a world where the vocabulary of violence determines who gets a hearing at the diplomatic table. In the late 20th century, the struggle over Palestine wasn’t only fought with guns and negotiations but with definitions. States and their allies could criminalize insurgency by naming it “terror,” while insurgent movements tried to recode themselves as “liberation.” Arafat’s sentence is a passport request in the language of international legitimacy.

The subtext is an argument about asymmetry. For actors without conventional armies, “terrorism” becomes the one word that collapses their political grievances into mere pathology. Arafat resists that collapse by insisting that the cause supplies innocence in advance. It’s also a dodge: it neatly avoids the messy ethical question of targeting civilians by relocating judgment to the righteousness of the project.

Rhetorically, the absoluteness (“cannot possibly”) is the tell. It’s built to foreclose debate, not invite it, because the audience is global and the stakes are recognition: the difference between being treated as a negotiating partner or a criminal.