What happened is terrible, what was happening was terrible, what is happening is terrible, and what will happen is terrible. And most of us have no way to change any of it.
But what I appreciate about this post is that it calls for something we are in control of: our thoughtfulness in our responses. Which is always in short supply. So it's good to be reminded.
Phrases like "the war on terrorism" or "the war on poverty" or "the war on drugs" all mess up the word "war." We know that a war is between people; when it is used to mean action against a thing or a concept, it is being used as a metaphor. Under current usage, this metaphor has been asked to carry too much weight; it has collapsed into pieces and now just radiates fearsome, uncertain emotion that can be used for whatever purpose.
The thought behind calling those things "war" was that we stop thinking about funding when war happens, so instead of trying to think about these things as policy choices, we just call it "war" and then hit it with everything we got. It obviously hasn't worked out that way
HamNo, I feel like all the criticism you're receiving for this article is willfully missing the forest.
The words "terrorism" and "terrorist" are loaded and lack naunce. It allows black and white thinking, good guys and bad guys. And obscures the truth and nature of how and why things happen.
"The real source of “bias” in most reporting is the things that are taken for granted."
I loved this sentance for it's truth.
I'm sorry you are being attcked for this post.
Witness India & Canada, as a super recent example though there are innumerable.
Hamas now, The PLO before them, every armed group who has risen up to protest the oppresssion of their people are labeled terrorist
The history of this Holy, Bloody land, claim and claim and claim and claim and counter claim for centuries.
I don't know that I think that those who would use violence to solve violence are right. That they get to make that choice for the innocent who will then inevitably suffer for their actions. Even when I see where their fury has its roots.
Being a Terrorism Studies hobbyist, the way that the word is casually bandied about and applied to events and people incorrectly by media and the like really pisses me off. I also hate the word, "radicalization", as it seems to be a magic bullet that explains how people commit violence.
It will, not doubt, be used to explain the attack in Israel in some circles. "They were RADICALIZED", and everyone will nod sagely, not really understanding what CAUSED the attack. What the ENVIRONMENT is like, the SOCIETY, the CULTURE, the lack of CARE of the WORLD to have to beg for three hours of electricity because your building got a "good behaviour" card this week. The whole damn thing upsets me. Israel is the WORST landlord anyone will ever have in their lives.
I have heard a lot of words to describe the reasons for the attack and I know cognitively, why this attack occurred. Also, I don't like how people are using OTHERING language to describe the non-Hamas Palestinians and the Jewish people living in Israel. I don't like how the Jewish people on Twitter have to defend themselves, their communities, and their culture, and their loyalty to the countries they live in. There's not a word in English that describes how terrible this attack was, I can only think of a string of adverbs. We cannot control what others do, but we can control our response to it.
Thank you for this that you have written, it has reminded me of a lot of things I need to reflect on.
Yes. Yes. If you want historic evidence of why Hamilton is right, please see the following list of terrorists, kindly supplied by the upstanding government of Henrik Verwoerd, which definitely did not use the state to inflict terror and mass violence.
Oliver Tambo
Walter Sisulu
Joe Slovo
Ahmed Kathrada
Nelson Mandela
Chris Hani
Moses Madhiba
Arthur Goldreich
Rusty Bernstein
(And others - these are just my favorite trade unionists, activists, and statesmen…I mean terrorists.)
I agree with the premise that, like other blanket descriptions, "terrorism" typically fails to define why individuals or groups resort to actions other than what we'd understand to conform to the conventions of warfare. A favorite class in college was titled "On Revolution" and included Algeria, Vietnam, and the American Revolution. In each case some groups resorted to carrying out attacks not only to inflict damage on colonial powers but sometimes attacks on civilians to try and "persuade" the populace to turn against occupiers.
Such actions were characterized by unpredictability and can be indiscriminate in who is affected. Long form journalism might dig into the circumstances that created such despair that individuals resorted to such actions. It's interesting that strategies widely used by the Nazis in WWII - retaliatory executions of civilians among them - aren't typically referred to as terrorist attacks even though, by all definitions, that's exactly what they were. In America's revolution many tactics are described as guerilla attacks in that they didn't rely on face to face battles with standing armies. The revolutionaries here didn't attack civilian populations.
We're bad enough at history in this country that presentation of the political contexts of the time are necessary to provide perspective. Once that's established it's still important to understand the distinctions between what we think of as conventional means of fighting political oppression and that which is paramilitary or even extra-military. Today's culture values short form descriptions at the expense of historical realities.
The reason I tried to make the contrast between a journalistic and a political argument here is that typically mainstream journalism makes the claim that it is not making political arguments--instead, they are giving readers the information necessary for them to make their own judgments. And this is a case where the way things are being covered makes very heavy judgments up front, under a pose of neutrality, and readers come away with less understanding rather than more.
You wrote at the beginning: "Decades of evidence show that the more the media pushes this concept {terrorism], the more warped the public understanding of global events becomes. I am making this not as a political argument, but as a journalistic one."
So, two issues: you do not cite anything to back up your "decades of evidence" claim.
and you write that your post is not a political argument. So, to reply to me that "life is political" is shoddy thinking.
If you want to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, that's your right. And that's what you do in your post. And I'll disagree with you. But you should not be engaging in the very sophistry you claim to be criticizing. It's just incoherent and to quote George Orwell from "Politics and the English Language" it's "slovenly."
I came away with more understanding that you love baby murderers. I can send you some awesome clips straight out of Hamas's telegram channel. One hell of a not at all terroristic Saturday those guys had.
I think terrorism is a pretty clearly defined term which can be used in good foreign policy related content/context and good faith. These people wish to inflict terror on others, plain and simple. Fear. You also provide no alternative you wish to be used. You also only link to Palestinian efforts in your post while hundreds of Israeli civilians' bodies lay cold. I think you should use this time to reflect on your own biases and priors. Hard to understand how someone can square being pro-journalism with the clear one-sidedness of this article.
You wrote at the beginning: "Decades of evidence show that the more the media pushes this concept {terrorism], the more warped the public understanding of global events becomes. I am making this not as a political argument, but as a journalistic one."
So, two issues: you do not cite anything to back up your "decades of evidence" claim.
and you write that your post is not a political argument. So, to reply to me that "life is political" is shoddy thinking.
If you want to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, that's your right. And that's what you do in your post. And I'll disagree with you. But you should not be engaging in the very sophistry you claim to be criticizing. It's just incoherent and to quote George Orwell from "Politics and the English Language" it's "slovenly."
"The public desire for revenge is both understandable and terrifying, but the erasure of any moral red line is always a frightening thing.
It is important not to minimise or condone the heinous crimes committed by Hamas. But it is also important to remind ourselves that everything it is inflicting on us now, we have been inflicting on the Palestinians for years. Indiscriminate firing, including at children and older people; intrusion into their homes; burning down their houses; taking hostages – not just fighters but civilians, children and older people. I keep reminding myself that ignoring this context is giving up a piece of my own humanity. Because violence devoid of any context leads to only one possible response: revenge. And I don’t want revenge from anyone. Because revenge is the opposite of security, it is the opposite of peace, it is also the opposite of justice. It is nothing but more violence."
I maintain that there are crimes of abundance and there are crimes of hunger, and we have not only brought Gaza to the brink of starvation, we have brought it to a state of collapse. Always in the name of security. How much security did we get? Where will another round of revenge take us?"
"Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control."
There is no lack of guilt and bloody hands in the Middle East. Claiming the right of tit for tat is not a valid excuse. That doesn’t absolve the various leaders over time in Israel of responsibility for their violence towards the Arabs and Palestinians.
However, right now — right now — there is also no excuse for the actions of Hamas. Hundreds murdered at a peace concert, elderly people deliberately trapped in houses and burned alive, babies and children murdered, hundreds of civilians, including women and children kidnapped, one-by-one executions of innocents threatened. Much more.
The original article is untimely to say the least. Who cares about the use of the word terrorism when Israel and the Gaza Strip are burning, when this war may spread and burn out of control?
Violence begets violence but violence does not excuse violence. Cite past and current violence of Israel? It doesn’t excuse what Hamas has done and what it is seeking. It seeks the total destruction of Israel. That would result in the death of millions.
And Iran’s purpose? The ending of any peace process between Israel and Arab states.
Don’t talk to me of the definition of words right now.
I am shattered by what is going on there. There is no question that the repressive crushing rule that Netanyahu and his fellow travelers on the far right have been imposing on the Palestinians, and the government’s actions around Al Aqsa are deeply immoral. But Hamas is completely nihilistic. They embed their command centers and their artillery in civilian structures. Their actions in this latest attack, like the massacre of those kids at the rave, break all international laws and frameworks around conflict (such as they are).
And what is going to come is a wave of violence against innocent civilians on both sides that will lead to another generation of recrimination, blood and death.
If one atrocity has already happened and another atrocity is currently unfolding and could still potentially be mitigated, I don’t see why it’s hard to recognize that the second should be the most urgent topic of attention right now
What happened is terrible, what was happening was terrible, what is happening is terrible, and what will happen is terrible. And most of us have no way to change any of it.
But what I appreciate about this post is that it calls for something we are in control of: our thoughtfulness in our responses. Which is always in short supply. So it's good to be reminded.
Phrases like "the war on terrorism" or "the war on poverty" or "the war on drugs" all mess up the word "war." We know that a war is between people; when it is used to mean action against a thing or a concept, it is being used as a metaphor. Under current usage, this metaphor has been asked to carry too much weight; it has collapsed into pieces and now just radiates fearsome, uncertain emotion that can be used for whatever purpose.
The thought behind calling those things "war" was that we stop thinking about funding when war happens, so instead of trying to think about these things as policy choices, we just call it "war" and then hit it with everything we got. It obviously hasn't worked out that way
HamNo, I feel like all the criticism you're receiving for this article is willfully missing the forest.
The words "terrorism" and "terrorist" are loaded and lack naunce. It allows black and white thinking, good guys and bad guys. And obscures the truth and nature of how and why things happen.
"The real source of “bias” in most reporting is the things that are taken for granted."
I loved this sentance for it's truth.
I'm sorry you are being attcked for this post.
Witness India & Canada, as a super recent example though there are innumerable.
Hamas now, The PLO before them, every armed group who has risen up to protest the oppresssion of their people are labeled terrorist
The history of this Holy, Bloody land, claim and claim and claim and claim and counter claim for centuries.
I don't know that I think that those who would use violence to solve violence are right. That they get to make that choice for the innocent who will then inevitably suffer for their actions. Even when I see where their fury has its roots.
“A terrorist ... is someone who has a bomb but no aeroplane.”
― John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl
Being a Terrorism Studies hobbyist, the way that the word is casually bandied about and applied to events and people incorrectly by media and the like really pisses me off. I also hate the word, "radicalization", as it seems to be a magic bullet that explains how people commit violence.
It will, not doubt, be used to explain the attack in Israel in some circles. "They were RADICALIZED", and everyone will nod sagely, not really understanding what CAUSED the attack. What the ENVIRONMENT is like, the SOCIETY, the CULTURE, the lack of CARE of the WORLD to have to beg for three hours of electricity because your building got a "good behaviour" card this week. The whole damn thing upsets me. Israel is the WORST landlord anyone will ever have in their lives.
I have heard a lot of words to describe the reasons for the attack and I know cognitively, why this attack occurred. Also, I don't like how people are using OTHERING language to describe the non-Hamas Palestinians and the Jewish people living in Israel. I don't like how the Jewish people on Twitter have to defend themselves, their communities, and their culture, and their loyalty to the countries they live in. There's not a word in English that describes how terrible this attack was, I can only think of a string of adverbs. We cannot control what others do, but we can control our response to it.
Thank you for this that you have written, it has reminded me of a lot of things I need to reflect on.
Yes. Yes. If you want historic evidence of why Hamilton is right, please see the following list of terrorists, kindly supplied by the upstanding government of Henrik Verwoerd, which definitely did not use the state to inflict terror and mass violence.
Oliver Tambo
Walter Sisulu
Joe Slovo
Ahmed Kathrada
Nelson Mandela
Chris Hani
Moses Madhiba
Arthur Goldreich
Rusty Bernstein
(And others - these are just my favorite trade unionists, activists, and statesmen…I mean terrorists.)
We need this kind of wisdom right now. The word 'terrorist' belongs in the garbage can so reporting can be done more accurately.
I agree with the premise that, like other blanket descriptions, "terrorism" typically fails to define why individuals or groups resort to actions other than what we'd understand to conform to the conventions of warfare. A favorite class in college was titled "On Revolution" and included Algeria, Vietnam, and the American Revolution. In each case some groups resorted to carrying out attacks not only to inflict damage on colonial powers but sometimes attacks on civilians to try and "persuade" the populace to turn against occupiers.
Such actions were characterized by unpredictability and can be indiscriminate in who is affected. Long form journalism might dig into the circumstances that created such despair that individuals resorted to such actions. It's interesting that strategies widely used by the Nazis in WWII - retaliatory executions of civilians among them - aren't typically referred to as terrorist attacks even though, by all definitions, that's exactly what they were. In America's revolution many tactics are described as guerilla attacks in that they didn't rely on face to face battles with standing armies. The revolutionaries here didn't attack civilian populations.
We're bad enough at history in this country that presentation of the political contexts of the time are necessary to provide perspective. Once that's established it's still important to understand the distinctions between what we think of as conventional means of fighting political oppression and that which is paramilitary or even extra-military. Today's culture values short form descriptions at the expense of historical realities.
This is a conversation I'd love to take offline
Thank you for this article, information therein is sorely needed.
Your post did exactly what it claimed it would not. It was political. You did not make me more stupid, but perhaps you did that disservice for others.
Life is political.
The reason I tried to make the contrast between a journalistic and a political argument here is that typically mainstream journalism makes the claim that it is not making political arguments--instead, they are giving readers the information necessary for them to make their own judgments. And this is a case where the way things are being covered makes very heavy judgments up front, under a pose of neutrality, and readers come away with less understanding rather than more.
You wrote at the beginning: "Decades of evidence show that the more the media pushes this concept {terrorism], the more warped the public understanding of global events becomes. I am making this not as a political argument, but as a journalistic one."
So, two issues: you do not cite anything to back up your "decades of evidence" claim.
and you write that your post is not a political argument. So, to reply to me that "life is political" is shoddy thinking.
If you want to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, that's your right. And that's what you do in your post. And I'll disagree with you. But you should not be engaging in the very sophistry you claim to be criticizing. It's just incoherent and to quote George Orwell from "Politics and the English Language" it's "slovenly."
It took me a minute to realize that you aren't actually interested in his argument, only in what he *believes*.
I came away with more understanding that you love baby murderers. I can send you some awesome clips straight out of Hamas's telegram channel. One hell of a not at all terroristic Saturday those guys had.
I think terrorism is a pretty clearly defined term which can be used in good foreign policy related content/context and good faith. These people wish to inflict terror on others, plain and simple. Fear. You also provide no alternative you wish to be used. You also only link to Palestinian efforts in your post while hundreds of Israeli civilians' bodies lay cold. I think you should use this time to reflect on your own biases and priors. Hard to understand how someone can square being pro-journalism with the clear one-sidedness of this article.
https://afmda.org/
https://www.fidf.org/
You wrote at the beginning: "Decades of evidence show that the more the media pushes this concept {terrorism], the more warped the public understanding of global events becomes. I am making this not as a political argument, but as a journalistic one."
So, two issues: you do not cite anything to back up your "decades of evidence" claim.
and you write that your post is not a political argument. So, to reply to me that "life is political" is shoddy thinking.
If you want to sympathize with the Palestinian cause, that's your right. And that's what you do in your post. And I'll disagree with you. But you should not be engaging in the very sophistry you claim to be criticizing. It's just incoherent and to quote George Orwell from "Politics and the English Language" it's "slovenly."
but it was terrorism though.
What is the equivalent pejorative to describe collective punishment in the oPt?
Granted this comment is whataboutism. But the OP is about context.
if you don't think slaughtering hundreds of teenagers at a rave, kidnapping people door to door, is "terrorism" I don't know what to tell you.
I'm pretty sure the equivalent pejorative for collective punishment is collective punishment.
Obvs there is no moral stigma attached to collective punishment, or else "the world's most moral army" would not be carrying it out.
Edit - I agree for the most part with your first sentence. But it omits the context, which is in fact a problem in the discussion of the situation.
so you want "murder kids at a music festival" to have a word that isn't *pejorative*?
Why?
So you want Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians ever since the Nakba to have a word that isn't pejorative? Why?
Already said what they're doing has a pejorative connotation. You're just being a dick.
"The public desire for revenge is both understandable and terrifying, but the erasure of any moral red line is always a frightening thing.
It is important not to minimise or condone the heinous crimes committed by Hamas. But it is also important to remind ourselves that everything it is inflicting on us now, we have been inflicting on the Palestinians for years. Indiscriminate firing, including at children and older people; intrusion into their homes; burning down their houses; taking hostages – not just fighters but civilians, children and older people. I keep reminding myself that ignoring this context is giving up a piece of my own humanity. Because violence devoid of any context leads to only one possible response: revenge. And I don’t want revenge from anyone. Because revenge is the opposite of security, it is the opposite of peace, it is also the opposite of justice. It is nothing but more violence."
I maintain that there are crimes of abundance and there are crimes of hunger, and we have not only brought Gaza to the brink of starvation, we have brought it to a state of collapse. Always in the name of security. How much security did we get? Where will another round of revenge take us?"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/09/israel-war-hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-government
This may also be relevant:
"Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control."
https://www.gawker.com/5875468/piss-on-war
None of this is easy to write about.
There is no lack of guilt and bloody hands in the Middle East. Claiming the right of tit for tat is not a valid excuse. That doesn’t absolve the various leaders over time in Israel of responsibility for their violence towards the Arabs and Palestinians.
However, right now — right now — there is also no excuse for the actions of Hamas. Hundreds murdered at a peace concert, elderly people deliberately trapped in houses and burned alive, babies and children murdered, hundreds of civilians, including women and children kidnapped, one-by-one executions of innocents threatened. Much more.
The original article is untimely to say the least. Who cares about the use of the word terrorism when Israel and the Gaza Strip are burning, when this war may spread and burn out of control?
Violence begets violence but violence does not excuse violence. Cite past and current violence of Israel? It doesn’t excuse what Hamas has done and what it is seeking. It seeks the total destruction of Israel. That would result in the death of millions.
And Iran’s purpose? The ending of any peace process between Israel and Arab states.
Don’t talk to me of the definition of words right now.
The blood has not dried yet.
I am shattered by what is going on there. There is no question that the repressive crushing rule that Netanyahu and his fellow travelers on the far right have been imposing on the Palestinians, and the government’s actions around Al Aqsa are deeply immoral. But Hamas is completely nihilistic. They embed their command centers and their artillery in civilian structures. Their actions in this latest attack, like the massacre of those kids at the rave, break all international laws and frameworks around conflict (such as they are).
And what is going to come is a wave of violence against innocent civilians on both sides that will lead to another generation of recrimination, blood and death.
Does Israel have any choice in how they respond?
THIS.
If one atrocity has already happened and another atrocity is currently unfolding and could still potentially be mitigated, I don’t see why it’s hard to recognize that the second should be the most urgent topic of attention right now
-- Hamilton Nolan
https://twitter.com/hamiltonnolan/status/1712276946871030211
[... but it's NOT terrorism, because Israel is the side with the aeroplanes.]