Soviet Union

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 411.

Israel

Iraq

Iran

The United States Department of State includes Iran as a terrorist state using its definition of state-sponsors of terrorist activity. This is based mainly on allegations of financial support to terrorist organisations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islam Jihad, and PFLP-GC ; as well as "financial, training, weapons, explosives, political, diplomatic, and organizational aid" to Hizbullah.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein is widely believed to have been responsible for numerous chemical weapons attacks on its own civilian population to stem revolutionary activity and pacify ethnic groups. One of the more famous incidents is the Halabja poison gas attack.

Some hold that Israel's approach to the Palestinians is a form of state terrorism, claiming that it is using military force to attack Palestinian civilians, peaceful protesters and members of organizations that it labels as "terrorist". Israel disputes this allegation. Israel's military operations have often resulted in the deaths of civilians, leading to accusations of state terrorism against Israel. Israel counters that Palestinian terrorists use civilians as decoys and aim to maximise civilial death toll.

Israel's "targeted assassionations" of supposed terrorist leaders have been criticized as "extra-judicial execution". Its use of bulldozers, explosives, helicopter gunships, tanks, and missiles launched from drone aircraft and fighter jets into civilian areas to assassinate individuals targetted by the Israeli government, destroy the homes of suspected militants and their families and to eliminate houses in the Gaza Strip that contain tunnels Israel claims are used to smuggle weapons from Egypt have also been criticized as terrorism.

A multitude of Israeli military attacks against civilian areas and refugee camps such as the Qana Massacre and attack on Jenin have been condemned as terroristic, although Israel maintains that these are always in response to terrorist activity in these camps.

Israel's policy of mass detention without charge or trial of Palestinian civilians suspected of militant opposition to Israel and allegations of torture in Israeli prisons are also considered by some to be terroristic.

Under the reign of Josef Stalin (and, to a lesser extent, under several other Soviet leaders), political opponents of the Soviet regime, as well as perceived "enemies of the people", were subject to incarceration under life-threatening circumstances and execution. Stalin was able to cement his hold on power by intimidating and executing his political opponents, real and imagined.

The assassination of dissidents in exile (such as the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico by agents of Stalin) might also be considered an example of state terrorism.