This paper will review some key issues concerning the terrorist label. Did the Palestinians, represented by Hamas1, have other more peaceful means at their disposal when they attacked regions in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023? Hamas was registered as a terrorist party by the U.S. in 1997. It is now more than 23 years since U.S. President G.W. Bush launched the war on terror. The objective of the war against terror was to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights and thus remove the causes of international terrorism.

The USA often had great difficulties following internationally agreed conventions during this war. It resorted frequently to extreme violence and terror, including taking prisoners and transferring them to secret locations where they were subjected to violence and torture. The U.S. reacted with identical behaviour patterns as we observe today being played out by Israel in its war against Palestinians. The story told in Western mainstream media is that Israel is a democracy. Virtually, by definition, Israel does not engage in terrorist acts or hostage-taking. Instead, it has a right to defend itself against terrorists, although its closest protagonist, the USA, had done the registration.

This paper will show how the mainstream media narrative manipulates the public to adopt policies supporting U.S. and Western interests. The population targeted by the media is conditioned to associate negatively with the terrorist label. Terrorists are those who oppose U.S. interests.

Background

The origin of the term terrorist dates to the aftermath of the French Revolution in the late 18th Century when Robespierre reigned by terror between 1792 and 1794. Pro-royalists and opponents of the principle of equality, one of the critical principles of the revolution, were tortured and killed. The concept of terror has ever since been associated with some revolutionary objectives and resistance to existing order. By declaring an enemy terrorist, the opponent becomes a monster, or in the words of the Israeli Minister of Defense, Gallant, an animal that evokes fear and panic among people by sheer mention of the word.

The recent violence in the Middle East has drawn renewed attention to the need for a universal definition of who qualifies as a terrorist. Should states be exempted from being classified as terrorists even when the violence exerted by agents of a state, such as the IDF, far exceeds those of Hamas and Hezbollah? Hamas is an elected body that has ruled Gaza since 2006, in principle, under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, which has recognised the International Humanitarian Law with implications for both Israel and Hamas.

The State of Israel controls all life in Gaza. The entire population is controlled and surveyed. Israel approves all goods that enter Gaza, and no Palestinians can leave or enter Gaza without the approval of the Israeli authorities. The Israeli authorities control even food and water. The withholding of those essential goods is the foundation of the accusation of genocide raised against Israel. Consequently, to bring justice to the world's worst war criminals, the international community has created the International Criminal Court (ICC).2 It issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for one of the military leaders of Hamas, as well as for the Israeli PM and Minister of Defense, Netanyahu, and Gallant.

According to international legal authorities, Israel remains an occupying power and is therefore obliged to ensure that the basic needs of the people occupied are satisfied. When peaceful means fail to end foreign occupation, people can fight for their liberty and independence. The Palestinians' right to self-determination is widely recognised. Numerous UN resolutions have confirmed this right, the most important being the UNSC 242 of November 1967. Mainstream media, in connivance with the policies of a handful of media houses, is quick to focus on the ferocious atrocities of the attack of Hamas rather than on its rationale and context made public in a joint statement issued in December 2023.3

The media made no references to the many UN resolutions declaring the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and in conflict with international law. The attack was described with a vocabulary that could leave nobody untouched. The stories were outdone with the taking of two hundred and fifty hostages by Hamas. The term ‘hostage-taking’ is usually applied to an act committed by terrorists, whereas the term prisoner is reserved for states undertaking similar acts. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has captured more than 10.500 civilian Palestinians in the West Bank. They are being kept without due process and often subjected to torture. Officially, they are referred to as prisoners but are not different from hostages and could become part of an exchange deal with individuals taken prisoner by Hamas.

It soon became apparent that Israel’s counterattack to Hamas’ uprising was not just a question of revenge. The objective is to drive the Palestinians from their ancestral land by all means available, including targeting civilians during raids from air and land, starvation, destruction of hospitals and schools, and blocking all aid and food from entering Gaza from Israel.

The argument

Following the spectacular events on September 11, 2001, with three terrorist attacks on the USA, it took the leadership in the global war against terrorism. It became soon evident that this war had no intention of targeting all terrorists but only those that threatened the interests of the USA and its collaborators. We will argue that if a state friendly to the political West applies terrorist methods against non-state terrorists and states sponsoring terrorists, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Counterterrorism in the State Department, such states will not be registered as terrorists, neither by the West nor by the UN.

This paper will show that two sets of vocabularies are applied to describe identical actions by two warring parties when one is a registered terrorist. Thus, a significant point of the article is that terrorists are mainly those who use incredibly violent acts that threaten the existing world order as directed and serving the interests of the USA and its primarily Western allies and the presumed values inherent in liberal democracies as they have evolved and been defined by free market policies and human rights.

How concepts are used depends on whether they contribute to supporting and strengthening American power. The USA often pays lip service to democratic and human rights values. It applies a narrative that gives an image of it as the leader of liberal democracies when the truth is that the U.S. has client states among medieval monarchies, military juntas, presidential autocracies, and liberal democracies.4 When the U.S and its allies categorise an act as terrorist, they are conscious of the pejorative connotation of the term and understand that its use condemns and delegitimises any political motives that the act seeks to promote, even when a more just and equal world for all forms part of the central values of the mission of the so-called terrorist.

This kind of negative branding applies to the case of Hamas, which, over the years, has become the critical resistance party fighting for the liberation of Palestinians in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas has become a combatant against an Israeli occupation force controlling the daily lives of Palestinians. In the absence of a general definition of terrorism, we will argue that those registering an act as terrorist do so based on opportunistic and national interests serving to preserve U.S. hegemony and ensuring support to allies while breaking up and making it challenging to establish alliances among countries opposing this hegemony.

The categorisation of the organisation Hamas as a terrorist automatically leads to negative attitudes towards its activities despite its popularity base among the people it defends. We will argue that the media exploits this fact for commercial reasons rather than present the act in its political, historical, and socio-economic context to enable the audiences to better understand the importance of the event.

Furthermore, we will argue that there is no difference between terrorism committed by state and non-state actors as far as targeting civilians and the cruelty of the methods applied. If there is a difference, it appears in the magnitude of the violence and the number of victims affected. States such as Israel have access to modern and advanced weaponry. The methods, not the actors, must determine if an act should be labeled terroristic. We believe that actors committing a violent uprising against an occupying enemy are justified, especially as a last resort when other, more peaceful approaches have been exhausted.

State actors committing similar acts must be condemned and sanctioned since a state like Israel has the resources and technology to protect civilians. This paper aims to reflect an understanding of a community that has been downtrodden and threatened in its identity to the extent that it has become convinced that the only way left of asserting that dignity is to commit a violent act against the occupying force and those it represents, regardless of whether they are civilians or officials of the regime. Violent rebellion is sometimes said to be justified, or its moral gruesomeness rectified, by lack of alternatives.

On October 7, 2023, a violent attack took place against Israeli military and law-enforcement agencies. At the time of this rebellion against an occupying enemy, some civilians were wounded, some were killed, while others were taken hostages. It does not fall within the scope of this paper to determine the innocence of civilians implicated in the attack. Were these innocent civilians collateral damage, as the Americans call innocent victims of wars? Does the awareness of the atrocities of the State of Israel against Palestinians make civilians accomplices? No Israeli can be unaware that 750 000 Palestinians in 1948 were expelled from their land to be taken over by Jewish newcomers to the Palestinian territories. Since then, Palestinians have either been occupied by Israel or lived as second-class citizens in an apartheid state. The event of 1948 was named the Nakba—the catastrophe.

Should Hamas refrain from violent uprisings as the de facto sole resistance party? Would it not be like giving up hope of liberation altogether? The cant of Israel's right to defend itself disguises the belief that terrorist acts committed by states are considered morally defensive. We will argue that a similar position applies to liberation movements fighting for the establishment of sovereign and national liberation, as does Hamas. We believe that the violence exerted by Hamas is of a different kind than that which, for instance, was carried out by the Somalian al-Shabaab group when it killed more than 700 students at Garissa University in Kenya in 2015.

The deadweight of the terrorist label

With more than 200 definitions of terrorism, it is no wonder that no agreement exists on a general definition. Therefore, the subjective feelings and motivations of the registering agent assume an essential role in categorising individuals, organisations, and states as terrorists. The term terrorist becomes part of the armory of fighting an enemy. It raises doubt about the utility of registering an entity as a terrorist when we notice that the USA is the most active country proposing and deciding who is a terrorist.

When registering an entity as a terrorist, the U.S. compels its allies to adopt and accept its registration. The U.S. applies negative sanctions against countries that ignore the terrorist categorisation. The implication of being registered as a terrorist or a sponsor of terrorism carries a high cost. Cuba’s income per person is estimated to be 1/3 or 1/4 of what it would be without the American sanctions against a State Sponsoring of Terrorism.

The ideological standpoint of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the U.S. State Department shapes the meaning of terrorism. This department registers a political party as a terrorist and ignores the context when it is most opportune for the U.S. The current war in the Middle East between the democratically elected Hamas government of Gaza and Israel ignores the fact that Hamas’s attack on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023, was in response to Israeli occupation and blockade of Gaza, which has become the world's largest open prison with nowhere to go for the prisoners.

Hamas re-launched a liberation war, which, according to IHL, serves as a legitimate cause for violent resistance when all other options have been explored. Thus, the right to resist an illegal occupation is a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere. We believe that all approaches, including diplomatic ones, have been tried since Israel in 1967 occupied what remains of Palestine following the creation of Israel in 1948.

All efforts towards a solution allowing the two people to live side by side have been unsuccessful. Prior to October 7, the Palestinian liberation from Israeli occupation had gradually lost its urgency as a political priority among the international community. The response by Israel to the October 7 event in 2023 triggered worldwide sympathy for Hamas' liberation war, and the eyes of the world focused on Gaza and eventually on Lebanon as well.

Virtually all parties, state and non-state actors, opposed to the global dominance of the USA and its allies, and especially to the presence of these powers in the Middle East, end up being registered as terrorists or sponsors of terrorism. Such registration has several advantages for the USA. It can give its unwavering support to the enemy of the declared terrorist. The target of the terrorist state will now be morally justified to apply non-democratic means to defeat the terrorist agent. It also follows that the support of the U.S. to the enemy registered as terrorists, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, leads to demands for increased deliveries of arms. Since the beginning of the century, the war on terror has meant a significant profit for transnational arms manufacturers.

Disagreements on an internationally accepted definition of terrorism will likely continue, mainly because it gives the registering actor tremendous power. For this reason, it has been argued that terrorism is far too valuable a term for governments of liberal democracies to be controlled and adequately defined.

Israel’s privilege to kill

The reaction among Western liberal democracies considering themselves allies of Israel has spoken with one tongue: Israel has a right to defend itself. This, in fact, implies that Israel can use any means of modern warfare to defeat its enemy. A ‘democracy’ must protect itself against terrorists, even when the label is applied to a movement fighting for national liberation.5 Except for the government of Turkey, no leaders of the political West have talked about the rights of Palestinians to resist an illegal occupation.

Western leaders and the supporting media have made us believe that Hamas, when entering southern Israel on foot or motorcycles with hand weapons, was a threat to the existence of the State of Israel. Hamas has no modern military, no air force, no navy, no air defense systems, and no nuclear weapons, as does Israel. Palestine, including The Gaza Strip, has been told to accept living in Gaza under concentration camp conditions, to accept marginalisation, injury, injustice, and humiliation forever. It has been debated if Israel occupies Gaza since there, until October 7, 2023, were no Israeli troops on the ground. Israel has legalised the internationally illegal settlements of Jewish settlers on the West Bank with the apparent aim eventually of making a two-state solution impossible.

During the last year, mass protests in major cities worldwide have begun to shift the narrative. Against a background of destruction of residential zones in Gaza being destroyed beyond repair, Israel’s right to defend itself sounds increasingly hollow. The question has been raised as to the rationale of Hamas’ attack of October 7 attack. “Why did they sacrifice their lives, those of their families and friends, and the rest of the Palestinians in Gaza? Why did they decide to confront one of the most powerful armies in the world, using the most elementary weapons?”6

The most likely answer is that the attack on Israel was a desperate call to the world for help. Despite numerous UN resolutions ignored by Israel and the American government, the occupation has now lasted since 1967. Hamas' act on October 7 should be seen as perhaps the last call to the world to focus on the inhuman conditions under which they have had to exist for decades.

No room for two states

Applying the term ‘terrorist’ to the elected Hamas party of Gaza rules virtually out the possibility of an independent state for the Palestinian people since the influence of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party is almost non-existent and carries no weight against the Israeli occupation. The most important resistance to the Israeli occupation is that provided by Hamas. Therefore, it has become imperative for the government of Israel to wipe out Hamas and, with it, all its supporters of the Gaza population and a growing number of supporters in the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s whole career has been devoted to crushing the hopes for an independent Palestinian state and protecting the gains of Israel’s right-wing settler movement, his core political base. To do so, he has had to fend off Western European pressure. He uses the holocaust legacy, and he plays out the East and Central European countries against the old West European countries, such as France, Germany, and Great Britain. The Hungarian PM was among the first European leaders to go against the ICC ruling. He declared that Netanyahu would be welcome in Budapest. He would have nothing to fear going there. The Israeli PM is a great hero in some of these nationalist, xenophobic countries that do not want immigration by Muslims. Netanyahu is a hero to these Central European leaders because he does not let others push him around.

When Netanyahu in 2022 was challenged with the formation of a new government, he had to promise the religious right that he, in due course, subject to “timing” and Israel’s international interests, would be positively inclined to the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. Another critical step towards annexation of the West Bank was transferring IDF control to civilian administration in the Ministry of Defense. The transfer of West Bank authority from military to civilian control is considered an escalatory step toward annexation.

Since a second Nakba has become impossible to implement, since neighbouring countries refuse to accept Palestinian refugees, it follows that mass murder and genocide offer possible solutions to avoiding the creation of an independent Palestinian state and enabling the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza into a greater Israel with borders of biblical Palestine. The Israeli government and spokespersons have on so many occasions after the 7 October attack by Hamas suggested that Palestinians must leave their current residences. The Israeli PM has even, in an interview, stated that it is time that the Palestinians stop dreaming about their proper state.

The Jewish Currents underscored this: “The fact is, Israel has a concerted policy to have the most amount of land with the least number of Palestinians—you get there in two ways: ethnic cleansing and murder. And mostly, it has taken the first track, along with processes of coercion, to get people to leave. However, now we are seeing the latter; there is a deliberate effort to at least thin the population in Gaza, to 'liquidate the ghetto.”7 In the planning of the war, official Israel leaves no space for a two-state solution. Therefore, it aims to drive out the Palestinians by any means, even terrorist and genocidal measures, from Gaza and the West Bank. It has become evident that the Palestinians are paying the price for the holocaust committed by Europeans.

The lesser of two evils

Countries that support terrorist organisations are often negatively sanctioned by Western powers, usually upon the initiative of the USA. The registration of an entire nation as a sponsor of terrorism serves the intended impact of blocking alliances against U.S. interests. This weapon was used against Ghaddafi’s Libya, who repeatedly was accused of financing international terrorism, especially groups fighting for the liberation of Palestine. Today, the accusation of sponsoring international terrorism is most strongly addressed against Iran, which is considered essential for the survival and functioning of Hamas and Hezbollah. Consequently, it has been registered as a state-sponsoring terrorism.

The U.S. has also included North Korea and Cuba on the list of four SSOTs. Except for the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the international community and the UN do not apply the concept of terrorists to national armies, even when an army has emerged from terrorist organisations and continues to commit terrorist acts, as is the case with IDF. The IRGC was classified as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2019 by President Trump. It was the first time that security agents of a state were declared terrorists. The IRGC consists of 190 000 troops with ties to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.

The hypocrisy of registering an enemy with a value-loaded term as a terrorist becomes apparent when reviewing other wars with U.S. involvement. We recall the atrocities committed by the U.S. army in Vietnam, where it applied napalm bombs on villages suspected of collaborating with the communist enemy of the Vietcong. The American military sprayed entire fields with orange agents—a pesticide—thus making it impossible to grow food crops. The principle behind this kind of state terrorism committed by the leader of the so-called free world seems to be ‘the lesser of two evils’—to be communist is evil, and the lesser evil is to get killed.

State terrorism is not new to Western countries. Consider when the Allied forces during the Second World War undertook air raids on Hamburg (1943) and Dresden (1945), with civilian casualties of 40 000 and 25 000, respectively. These terrorist raids were marketed as necessary and deemed morally justified. It was assumed that the deliberate objective of killing German civilians would contribute to ending the war and thus reduce the overall suffering. Resistance movements in countries occupied by Nazi Germany were always considered freedom fighters, even when innocent civilians were among the victims. Perhaps future generations will judge Hamas’ act of October 7, 2023, from a different perspective if it eventually will result in liberating Palestinians from Israel’s inhuman and illegal occupation.

The media and terrorism

The importance of the media in forming our views and political standpoints is often underestimated, especially by those under the influence of the media. Most individuals like to believe that they have a critical view of the news being presented to them. After all, the press operates in communities that claim to practice the principle of free speech. However, decision-makers are often ready to act on unverified news. Thus, when Reuters and other news agencies reported that Israeli football fans had been brutally beaten up by pro-Palestinian groups in the Netherlands, where a match had been played in early November 2024 between Israeli and Dutch clubs, heads of state from the USA to tiny Denmark were quick to declare that this reminded them of pogroms experienced by European Jews. After a couple of days, it emerged that Jewish fans had provoked the turmoil.

An example of the silent but steadfast impact of the media appears from two surveys undertaken over 75 years. A sample of French citizens were asked at the end of the Second World War who they thought mainly had contributed to the fall of Nazi Germany. In 1945, 57% responded that the German defeat was due to the Red Army of the USSR, and only 20% attributed this to the armies of the U.S. and its allies. When the same question was raised in 2024, 60% replied that it was thanks to the U.S. army, and only 25% acknowledged the contribution of the USSR.8

When the media tells the story of a group that, by the U.S. Bureau of Counter Terrorism, has been registered as a foreign terrorist, it rarely leads to understanding the motives of those committing the act. Most descriptions leave the audience in an emotional state of horror and panic. The position of the general population is almost automatically turned against the aggressors, who may only react to ongoing aggression, such as an illegal occupation of their patrimonial land. This exclusively negative attitude toward those committing violent acts also affects the politicians who are expected to seek solutions but fail because of prejudice created by the media. The same press describes in horrific terms the acts of Hamas but paints a glamorous image of the IDF as defenders of the democratic state of Israel.

The deceptive role of the U.S.

Since October 7, 2023, events have only reinforced the image of the U.S. as a nation with double standards. The arrest warrants issued by the ICC on a Hamas leader, the Israeli Prime Minister, and his former minister of defense on November 21, 2024, implicate the U.S. and the EU. The U.S. did not at any point show a willingness to withhold aid or arms delivery to Israel when it became apparent to any observer of the war that Israel aimed to diminish the number of Palestinians.

Instead, it vetoed four resolutions for a ceasefire at the UNSC to enable Israel to continue its Genocidal interventions. The U.S. Secretary of State undertook numerous missions to the Middle East to convince the international community of the peaceful intentions and that it was an impartial mediator. The truth is that he was acting as Israel’s lawyer and spokesperson to Israel’s Arab neighbours, encouraging them to receive Palestinian refugees from Gaza.

The role of the U.S. and its Western backers is worse than complicity. They have been actively involved with the U.S. in the driver's seat. The U.S. and Britain have provided essential intelligence information, while others, like the Netherlands and Denmark, have provided military materials. Thus, the warrants implicate, for instance, the Governments of the Netherlands and Denmark for violating their national laws, which prohibit weapons exports to countries involved in criminal war activities. This support has enabled Israel to continue its genocidal war with impunity. It can thus be concluded with great certainty that the American government has actively supported Israel in its genocidal war against the Palestinians. The ICC warrants will most likely disrupt the cant about Israel's right to self-defense among its unwavering supporters of EU countries.

Breaking the terrorist identity with the American dream

To better understand how the U.S. perceives its relations to Israel in the context of their joint war against Hamas, we need to identify the underlying values in the American war against terror as they were recognised by the 9/11 Commission established by former U.S. president George W. Bush.9 Until today, this is the most comprehensive attempt at analysing the causes of terrorism. The report suggests that children and youth worldwide, particularly in the Muslim world, should be taught about the excellent example of the USA, ruled by dignity and democratic values.

The findings ignored the inequality characterising countries dominated by free market policies. The free market is the solution to peace and development and especially the instrument by which terrorism and political violence should be fought. A new generation will grow up grateful to the USA for giving them hope and opportunities. The findings and conclusions of the 9/11 Commission also inform us why the Bureau of Counterterrorism is more inclined to search for terrorists in Muslim countries, which the political West considers to be authoritarian. Individual Muslims and Islamic organisations are overrepresented in the Register kept at the Bureau.

Conclusion

In this essay, we have shown that the terrorist label applied to a party like Hamas and a people like the Palestinians will not contribute to laying the foundation for peaceful co-existence with the Israelis. Instead, the term has encouraged Israel and its allies to apply disproportional and genocidal means to exterminate the Palestinians, regardless of whether they are part of Hamas. As we have shown here, the term terrorist is used for political aims to indicate who is liked and who is the enemy. We believe that no final solution will appear until liberation movements, such as Hamas, are referred to without the epithet of 'terrorist.'

Yasir Arafat's PLO and Nelson Mandela's ANC were initially both registered as terrorist organisations. When these groups were dissociated from the terrorist label, they could dialogue equally with neighbours and enemies. The only remnant of Arafat’s Fatah party is the Palestinian Authority, which today has been reduced to an executing agency of the Israeli forces occupying the West Bank. It was against this dying organisation that Hamas was able to obtain the government of Gaza. We believe that it serves no purpose towards a peaceful settlement of the future of the Palestinians to drive Palestinians out of their ancestral land based on the terrorist label.

The most critical obstacle to this declassification is the aggressive attitudes of the world’s superpower, the USA, which continues to believe that it must set the norms for the entire planet. More important is the capacity and willingness to act according to the values they pretend to promote. Hamas’ violent intervention undertaken with other resistance groups in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has brought the issue of the future of Palestine to the forefront of the attention of the international community. While doing this, it has made us all come to a better understanding of what the USA and its sidekick, Israel, stand for. During the presidency of G.W. Bush, the term rogue states emerged.10

Initially, it was mainly applied to North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Libya, which were considered threats to the political and economic policies of the U.S. and its allies. If we widen the group and define a rogue state as one that threatens world peace, we will be bound to put the USA and Israel on top of the list of rogue states.

Notes

1 Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya ("Islamic Resistance Movement"). In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza. The Palestinian Authority called an election the following year, and Hamas won a majority of seats in parliament and thus defeated Fatah, the party of the Palestinian Authority, who continued to govern the West Bank.
2 The Hague-based ICC seeks to investigate and prosecute those responsible for grave offenses such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
3 On December 28, 2023, multiple resistance factions, including Hamas, PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement), DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and PFLP_GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command), issued a joint declaration in Beirut.
4 Imperium Uncloaked, review by Grey Anderson in NLR no 147 (May/June 2024) of Tom Stevenson’s Someone Else’s Empire: British Illusions and American Hegemony, London and New York, 2023.
5 The Cant about Israel’s Right to Self Defense, by M. Reza Behnam, August 23, 2024, in Z-Network.
6 An Essential Question St ill Unanswered, by Cesar Chelala in Counterpunch, November 11, 2024.
7 Arielle Angel: Leaving Zion, in an interview with New Left Review, no. 148, 2024 (she is the chief editor of the Jewish-American magazine Jewish Currents).
8 L’histoire face aux manipulateurs, by Benoît Bréville (Le Monde diplomatique, no 847, October 2024).
9 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National Commission on terrorist Attacks on the United States, July 2004.
10 Some international theorists use the term "Rogue state" to describe states that they consider threatening the world's peace. The definition of a rogue state is determined exclusively by the U.S. government and mainly includes countries that support terrorism.