For all the hypocritical crusading rhetoric of US President George Bush about his “war on terror”, in practice he is promoting and sheltering real terrorists – the right-wing Cuban emigres who have been waging a terror war on revolutionary Cuba for decades.

The governments of Cuba and Venezuela are seeking the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, a notorious Cuban terrorist with a long record of attacks against the Cuban Revolution. Posada has close ties with the US Central Intelligence Agency.

On July 30, two bomb blasts in a crowded marketplace in west Jerusalem caused the deaths of 14 civilians. The Israeli government’s use of this terrorist act as a pretext to tighten its repression of the Palestinian population living under Israeli colonial occupation has again highlighted the ineffectiveness of acts of terrorism carried out by small groups as a means of combating oppression.

By terrorism, Marxists mean attempts by individuals or small groups to achieve political or social change by carrying out acts of violence (political assassinations, taking of hostages, blowing up of buildings) against individual representatives of the ruling class. The purpose of such acts is to exert pressure on the ruling class to change its policies.