Why we need to stop calling Hamas attackers ‘militants’ or ‘gunmen’ and start calling them ‘terrorists’
In the war of public opinion, words matter — now more than ever
Burnt out cars at the Supernova Music Festival that was attacked by Hamas. Photo by Getty Images
By Aviya Kushner October 12, 2023
I first found out about the massacre in Israel when I saw a headline in the Sunday edition of The New York Times in a print newspaper delivered to my parents’ house. It was Simchat Torah, when observant Jews are entirely offline, our phones shut. The news reached us late.
I read in stunned horror that more than 200 Israelis had been slain by “Hamas militants” on Shabbat, which was what was known at the time. I immediately thought: “militants?”
I knew that word choice would attract controversy.
Sure enough, at some point, The New York Times website changed “militants” to “gunmen” and finally mentioned “trail of terror” in the headline, as can be seen by screenshots shared by readers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
But does “gunmen” say it all?
Finding the right words
All words can seem inadequate and trivial after more than 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered and more than 100 toddlers, grandmothers, and concertgoers were taken hostage. But the truth is that Israel is fighting two wars for its life right now — the military campaign against Hamas and a war of public opinion.
In the second existential war — the war of what people around the world think — the way Hamas is described matters. It frames how Hamas is understood.
On Wednesday, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis of England made an impassioned statement to world media, asking it to call Hamas terrorists — not militants. And earlier this week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak joined Rabbi Mirvis at Finchley United Synagogue for a vigil and made a similar plea.
“The people who support Hamas are fully responsible for this appalling attack. They are not militants. They are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists,” Sunak tweeted.
There is a pattern here. Rabbis and heads of state tend to use the word “terrorist,” while journalists — schooled in the importance of “fairness” and “two sides to every story” — often choose “militant.”
Crucially, journalists are trained to verify facts before they report. If it’s not clear who perpetrators are, it can be safer to be more vague.
Definitions first
What is a “militant” anyway?
Merriam-Webster defines “militant” in two ways. It is a person who is, one, “engaged in warfare or combat,” and two, “aggressively active (as in a cause)”.
Well, what’s warfare?
Warfare, the dictionary tells us succinctly, is defined as “military operations between enemies” and is “an activity undertaken by a political unit (such as a nation) to weaken or destroy another.” In the months ahead, as Israel responds, we are likely to hear a lot about “the rules of warfare.”
We can certainly discuss whether one group toting guns and grenades and another group of preschoolers and grandmas at home, later beheaded or taken hostage, qualify as “military operations between enemies,” but it would be an absurd discussion.
All decent people must agree that babies and toddlers are not engaged in “military operations” — and that beheading captives is immoral.
As for “weakening or destroying another,” I don’t think Hamas, try as it might, will succeed in weakening or destroying Israel, but that was certainly its intent — so let’s give the dictionary definition of “militant” a point there.
In that sense, the word “militant” fits.
So, what is a terrorist?
Governments have official lists of terrorist organizations. Hamas has been on the U.S. list of foreign terror organizations since Oct. 8, 1997. It is also on the European Union’s list of terror organizations.
And the United States has a clear legal definition of international terrorism — a form of crime. I think that’s one reason so many of us are so revolted: This is crime, on a massive scale. The legal definition makes useful reading, and it’s especially interesting to see “kidnapping” specifically listed in their definition.
The FBI also has a lot to say on terrorism. “Protecting the United States from terrorist attacks is the FBI’s number one priority,” its website states.
As for what terrorism is, the FBI is clear and succinct: “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored).”
Irate letter writers
“Violent, criminal acts” absolutely describes what Hamas does. And what it has been doing for decades.
Over the years, as Hamas deliberately caused the bloodshed of civilians, many newspaper letter-writers have objected to the term “militant” — usually because they feel the appropriate term is “terrorist.”
This week, for instance, Richard Schlussel of Englewood, New Jersey, wrote to The New York Times with the same reaction I had to this weekend’s awful news — and to the original headline in The New York Times.
“The Hamas members who stormed into Israel, shot men and women where they stood, then kidnapped grandmothers and young girls are not ‘militants,’ as the Times refers to them. They are terrorists,” Schlussel wrote.
“It is baffling why the Times will not refer to them as terrorists. They have murdered civilians in their homes, terrorized a nation with indiscriminate rockets and taken hostages all to further a political goal.”
Schlussel is, in effect, saying that Hamas clearly meets the legal definition of terrorism — so why not the journalistic one?
President Biden weighs in
In addition to legal and journalistic terminology, we have also been seeing political terminology.
It matters that President Biden explicitly and clearly called Hamas “terrorists,” and so did several notable journalists — like Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News on Tuesday night.
I think Biden’s plain language may move the dial on Hamas and the “militant” label. “Terrorists purposefully target civilians, kill them,” Biden told the nation and the world.
“You know, there are moments in this life — and I mean this literally — when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas — a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews.”
That’s as explicit as it gets.
Biden’s personal appeal moved Israelis, some of whom joked on social media that it would be great to replace Bibi with Biden. The President’s words may also have an effect on journalists, who certainly listened closely to his comments, and may have thought — “he’s right. Terrorists.”
Multiple approaches from news organizations
From what I can see, American journalism organizations seem to be split on whether to use “militants” or “gunmen” as opposed to “terrorists” when describing Hamas. The Washington Post is still going with “militants.”
“The Israeli army escorted a group of journalists inside the town early Tuesday as the recovery of bodies was beginning,” said one article posted Oct. 10. “The pastoral community of about 400 is one of the closest to Israel’s sophisticated border fence with Gaza, which Hamas militants breached with apparent ease Saturday before rampaging through town after town.”
Al-Jazeera is using two terms — “armed Palestinian group” and “fighters”
“With Israel declaring war on the Gaza Strip after an unprecedented attack by the armed Palestinian group Hamas on Saturday, the world’s eyes are again sharply focused on what might come next,” Al-Jazeera reported. The next sentence used “fighters.”
Meanwhile, The Atlantic Monthly is going with “terrorist.”
In a widely shared piece, Yair Rosenberg interviewed the prominent Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon about his harrowing tale of survival — and eventual rescue by his own father, a retired major general. Note the use of the word “terrorist” to describe Hamas in Rosenberg’s opening description:
“Tibon lives in Nahal Oz, a small community bordering Gaza that has no Iron Dome missile defense to protect it. On Saturday, it came under mortar fire from above and was invaded on the ground by Hamas terrorists.”
The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, now anchors Washington Week on PBS, which brings together leading journalists to discuss the week’s news. I wish he would devote a few minutes to what to call Hamas — and why it matters.
Individual choice vs. organization policy
Something I have found fascinating, glued to the news in recent days, is that sometimes in the same broadcast, one journalist will say “terrorists” — as Geoff Bennett of the PBS News Hour did Tuesday night, while a few minutes later, correspondent Leila Molana-Allen said “militants.”
As I watched multiple CNN correspondents cry as they reported on what they had seen in kibbutzim along the Gaza border, and as Nick Schifrin of PBS teared up while interviewing a kibbutz resident who fled gunfire with her one-month-old daughter and mentioned that he, too, had an infant daughter at home, I found myself wondering what is appropriate for a reporter to say or do. But is that the right question?
A reporter is a human being. And as a human being, I was grateful that the reporters’ horrified tears were not edited out. These reporters were honoring viewers with the truth.
That’s what England’s chief rabbi wants — truth in reporting.
An acknowledgment that words matter. They matter for journalists and readers alike. And that requires all of us to understand that we are all soldiers in a war of public opinion.
“The depth of the terror that Hamas has inflicted upon innocent people across Israel in recent days is not in doubt,” Rabbi Mirvis tweeted. “The murder of babies where they sleep is not the act of a ‘freedom fighter.’ The performative desecration of dead bodies for the benefit of social media, the rape of women and the beheading of civilians in their homes, are not the acts of ‘militants.’”
“I call upon broadcasters to urgently change the way they describe Hamas,” Rabbi Mirvis continued. “Further, I call upon all decent people to have the courage to call out this terror for what it is.”
What individuals can do
I join Rabbi Mirvis’s call, and I want to add to it.
I challenge anyone in the field of education — at any level — to use the term “terrorists” to describe terrorists. It has been shameful to watch so many college students and professors cheer on Hamas — Hamas! — and to describe those who behead children as “resistance” and “freedom fighters.”
There is a world of difference between supporting Palestinian aspirations for statehood and Palestinian civil society and a group that has made its bloodthirsty desire to murder Jews clear for decades — in word and deed.
I also challenge readers to notice when news organizations use “militants” in a sentence, when the word choice is “gunmen” and when it’s “terrorists.” The examples from online dictionaries nearly all point to Israel.
Interestingly, the perpetrators of recent violent antisemitic attacks in the U.S. — later classified as terror — are often described in vaguer terms in newspapers. The Jersey City shooters at a kosher supermarket were described in The New York Times as “gunmen” (though one of the shooters was in fact a woman).
In a second New York Times piece, they were described as “assailants” and “attackers.” Later, the perpetrators were charged with domestic terrorism — in another example of the divergence between legal terms and journalistic terms.
The perpetrators of the 9/11 attack were described as “terrorists” from the beginning, and not “militants.”
In recent mass shootings, the perpetrator has been described as the “shooter” or “gunman.” Never as a “militant.”
Ask yourself: Are murderous gunmen mere “militants” when they attack Jews?
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