The U.S. Justice Department disclosed last week that it had charged six Hamas leaders with terrorism in February for organizing the Oct. 7 massacre of approximately 1,200 people in Israel — including more than 40 U.S. citizens.
Although none of those charged are likely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom — three have since been killed and Israeli forces are hunting down the rest — the unsealed indictments are a crucial expression of American solidarity with terrorism victims everywhere.
Attorney General Merrick Garland drove home the horror of the Oct. 7 bloodbath in a statement justifying the charges: “During the attack, Hamas terrorists murdered civilians who tried to flee, and those who sought refuge in bomb shelters,” he said. “They murdered entire families. They murdered the elderly, and they murdered young children. They weaponized sexual violence against women.”
Hamas also seized about 240 hostages and recently killed six more of them to pressure Israel to stop the fighting and leave Gaza.
The perpetrators of such depravities surely deserve to be called terrorists. The U.S. government designated Hamas as a terrorist organization way back in 1997. Yet many major media organizations now insist on using the innocuous word “militants” to describe Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist gangs.
This semantic dodge brings to mind George Orwell’s classic essay, “Politics and the English Language.” It describes how politicians and polemicists adopt euphemisms to mask harsh realities and couch their arguments in hazy abstractions rather than plain English.
This debasement of language, Orwell contended, undermines honest analysis and wise public decision-making. “The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
Foolish thoughts abound on elite U.S. campuses, where Gaza protesters chant Hamas’s antisemitic slogans, intimidate Jewish students and misread the Jews’ return to Israel as a parable of Western colonialism.
This week, Americans mark the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. What al Qaeda’s hijackers did to our country is morally indistinguishable from the sadistic violence Hamas inflicted on Israel.
This makes it a fitting moment to ask why prestigious news organizations like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC have taken it upon themselves to downgrade “terrorists” to “militants.”
“Calling someone a terrorist means you’re taking sides and ceasing to treat the situation with due impartiality,” BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson explained to critics of the “don’t say terrorist” rule.
Similarly, the Guardian’s style guide reportedly cautions its writers that “One person’s terrorist may be another person’s freedom fighter.”
Having once been one, I think reporters should strive to be objective. But no journalistic canon requires reporters to suspend all moral judgment when writing about Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocidaires or ISIS jihadists who massacre Moscow concertgoers, behead “infidels” on video, throw gays off buildings and turn female captives into sex slaves.
That’s not just moral relativism — it’s moral idiocy.
And what is a “militant” anyway? The word seems to connote fighters who stand somewhere between terrorists and uniformed soldiers. But its practical effect is to make what these “militants” do sound less terrible.
We already have better words — insurgent, rebel, guerilla — to describe people waging legitimate struggles against tyranny, oppression and foreign occupation. When these fighters cross the line and deliberately kill non-combatants, they taint their cause. They become terrorists.
It’s true that terrorism is a word that’s hurled around loosely and should always be used with precision. Russian ruler Vladimir Putin calls Ukrainians fighting for their independence terrorists, even as his forces rain missiles and bombs on hospitals and civilian dwellings in Kyiv and other cities.
Citing the war’s ghastly toll on Gaza civilians, some foreign leaders exonerate Hamas and accuse Israel of terrorism and genocide. Yet although there is plenty to criticize in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and conduct of the war, Americans should reject the spurious logic of moral equivalence.
The distinction between self-defense and terrorism also seems to elude U.S. college students besotted by “anti-Zionist” activism. They’ve discredited and marginalized their cause by rationalizing if not celebrating terrorism as a legitimate tool of Palestinian resistance and “liberation.”
Netanyahu faces strong pressure from President Biden and domestic critics to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza. Israeli leaders say Hamas’s demands are the chief obstacle. In any case, a cease-fire is worth pursuing to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and try to bring home the estimated 60 Israeli hostages that Hamas has not yet murdered.
But no one should confuse a cease-fire with peace. After Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran last July, the group named Yahya Sinwar as his successor. Sinwar is the mastermind of the Oct. 7 rampage and one of the six the Justice Department charged with terrorism. Isn’t it a bit much to ask any Israeli leader to negotiate peace with the man who instigated the slaughter, and whose avowed goal is to wipe the Jewish state off the map?
After 9/11, would U.S. leaders have succumbed to external pressure to strike a peace deal with Osama bin Laden? Fat chance.
It’s true that Netanyahu and his right-wing allies seem bent on depriving Palestinians of land, dignity and hope. But the U.S. should stand firm on this point: Palestinians will never achieve their legitimate national aspirations through terrorism aimed at Israel’s destruction. And the media should dispense with “militants,” a weaselly word that risks normalizing the wanton killing of innocents.
Orwell was right: In the fight to uphold rules of civilized conduct against barbarism, plain language and moral clarity are vital weapons.
Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.