{"id":248651,"date":"2023-11-20T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=248651"},"modified":"2023-11-18T04:30:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T04:30:04","slug":"are-hamas-a-terror-group-are-they-a-terror-group-answer-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/11\/are-hamas-a-terror-group-are-they-a-terror-group-answer-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Are Hamas a Terror Group? Are They a Terror Group? Answer the Question!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Officers\u2019 Club of the Army War College, Washington, D.C., 5 November 1946, celebrating the first post-war atomic tests.<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Nov 2023<\/em> – In an interview this week on Talk TV, Piers Morgan subjected<\/a> Jeremy Corbyn to an extraordinary barrage of questioning:<\/p>\n

\u2018Are Hamas a terror group? Are they a terror group? Answer the question! Are they a terror group? Are they a terror group? Are they a terror group? Are they a terror group? Why can\u2019t you say it? Are Hamas a terror group? Are Hamas a terror group?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although politicians like David Lammy have lately been responding<\/a> to the question of whether they support Israel\u2019s collective punishment of Gaza with, \u2018It\u2019s not a yes or no\u2019 question, when Corbyn tried to say something other than \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no\u2019, Morgan loudly barracked and interrupted him. We never got to hear what Corbyn wanted to say before Morgan ended the interrogation saying, shamefully:<\/p>\n

\u2018And you wonder, and you wonder, why people think you had a problem with Jewish people!\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Morgan later commented<\/a> on the interview:<\/p>\n

\u2018There are grave concerns about the soaring death toll in Gaza as Israel now seeks to eradicate Hamas. But there can\u2019t be any moral ambiguity about Hamas itself: they are a terror organisation who just committed one of the worst terror atrocities in history.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added:<\/p>\n

\u2018If you can\u2019t call Hamas a terror group, you\u2019re a terrorist sympathiser.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Corbyn retains a big following among left wing people\u2026 he does them no favours whatsoever.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Morgan proudly highlighted that former Foreign Secretary, now Home Secretary, James Cleverly had posted<\/a> a comment over a link to the interview on X (formerly Twitter):<\/p>\n

\u2018As Home Secretary, I can confirm that Hamas are a terror group.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a subsequent interview, Morgan similarly asked the Guardian\u2019s Owen Jones if he thought Hamas was a terror group. Jones answered<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes, if you engage in violence against a civilian population, that\u2019s terrorism.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We certainly agree that violence against a civilian population is terrorism. But that, in fact, is not<\/em> the meaning of \u2018terrorism\u2019 as it is all but universally understood and used in the \u2018mainstream\u2019. The actual meaning of \u2018terrorism\u2019 was explained<\/a> by Noam Chomsky:<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s very simple: if \u201cthey\u201d do it, it\u2019s terrorism; if \u201cwe\u201d do it, it\u2019s counterterrorism. That\u2019s a historical universal.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In reality, \u2018terrorism\u2019 is a propaganda label that is slapped solely<\/em> on Official Enemies and never \u2018us\u2019.<\/p>\n

Bearing Owen Jones\u2019s definition in mind, Corbyn might have asked Morgan if he thought the German Luftwaffe<\/em> was \u2018a terror group\u2019 in World War Two. An odd question, one might think, given the German air force\u2019s obliteration of civilian cities like Guernica, Warsaw and Stalingrad, among numerous other crimes. \u2018No\u2019 seems outrageous, but \u2018yes\u2019 raises awkward questions.<\/p>\n

If the Luftwaffe<\/em> was a terror group for its mass killing of civilians, how about Britain\u2019s RAF that firebombed Dresden and Hamburg? How about the US Army Air Force that firebombed every Japanese city with a population over 50,000 and, of course, atomic bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Has a \u2018mainstream\u2019 politician or journalist ever<\/em> described these as \u2018US nuclear terror attacks\u2019? Despite being, by Jones\u2019s definition, the ultimate acts of \u2018terror\u2019, the incineration of 180,000 civilians in giant fireballs is not<\/em> labelled terrorism for precisely the reason explained by Chomsky.<\/p>\n

And yet, after 25,000 people were brutally burned to death in the German city of Dresden in 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote<\/a> to Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Britain\u2019s Bomber Command:<\/p>\n

\u2018It seems to me that the moment has come that the bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed\u2026 The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite even this, could any right-thinking person agree with the German suggestion<\/a> that RAF flight crews were \u2018Terrorflieger\u2019 <\/em>(\u2018terror flyers\u2019)? In reply to a Media Lens reader who had suggested, reasonably, that \u2018a terrorist is one who brings terror to another person\u2019, Channel 4 news presenter Alex Thomson wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2018Your definition of a terrorist as one bringing terror is nonsensical as it would encompass all military outfits from al Qaeda to the Royal Fusiliers.\u2019 (Email, forwarded to Media Lens, 25 February 2005)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some Are More Valuable Than Others<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why does all of this matter? In a remarkable letter<\/a> to Tim Davie, the BBC\u2019s Director of News, BBC correspondent Rami Ruhayem excoriated BBC coverage of the current phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A former journalist for the Associated Press, Ruhayem has worked<\/a> as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005. He wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2018Words like \u201cmassacre\u201d, \u201cslaughter\u201d, and \u201catrocities\u201d are being used\u2014prominently\u2014in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018When the BBC uses such language selectively, with the standard of selection being the identity of the perpetrators\/victims, the BBC is making a statement\u2014albeit implicit. It implies that the lives of one group of people are more valuable than the lives of another<\/strong><\/em>.\u2019 (Ruhayem, letter to Tim Davie, 24 October 2023, our emphasis)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Journalists in the \u2018mainstream\u2019 have no problem at all in describing Hamas\u2019s abominable violence on 7 October as a \u2018massacre\u2019; but they rarely, if ever, describe the abominable razing of entire apartment blocks, indeed entire residential areas \u2013 killing dozens of Palestinian family members in a single blast \u2013 as a \u2018massacre\u2019. As Ruhayem says, this use of language makes one group of people seem more valuable<\/em>; it makes one set of crimes against civilians seem far worse<\/em>, even when the side being dehumanised is suffering ten times the number of casualties inflicted by an occupying, apartheid state arguably intent on genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when we accept the standard application of the label \u2018terrorism\u2019 solely to Official Enemies, we are assisting a propaganda campaign raising \u2018us\u2019 up and dehumanising \u2018them\u2019. That makes it easier for \u2018us\u2019 to kill \u2018them\u2019 because it makes it easier for \u2018our\u2019 public to accept the killing. That is an incredibly serious matter.<\/p>\n

Putting Owen Jones\u2019s definition aside, Chomsky often cites this<\/a> definition of terrorism found in US army manuals:<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2026 the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature. This is done through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.\u2019 (US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism Counteraction, TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By this definition, Chomsky points out, the major source of international terrorism is the West, notably the United States. Chomsky has no problem with using \u2018terrorism\u2019 to describe<\/a> the actions of Official Enemies:<\/p>\n

\u2018September 11 will surely go down in the annals of terrorism as a defining moment\u2026\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem is when \u2018our\u2019 terrorism is written out of journalism and history by the biased use of language.<\/p>\n

In his 2002 documentary, \u2018Palestine Is Still The Issue\u2019<\/a>, John Pilger interviewed Dori Gold, then Senior Adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister. Pilger asked why Israel fails to condemn its own leaders for their historic terrorist acts in the same way that they condemn terrorist acts against<\/em> Israel:<\/p>\n

\u2018When those Israelis, who are now famous names [Menachem Begin, Yitzak Shamir and Ariel Sharon], committed acts of terrorism just before the birth of Israel, you could have said to them, \u201cNothing justifies what you\u2019ve done, ripping apart all those lives.\u201d And they would say it did<\/strong><\/em> justify it. What\u2019s the difference?\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sticking to the standard definition and use of \u2018terrorism\u2019, Gold replied:<\/p>\n

\u2018I think we have now, as an international community, come to a new understanding. I think after September 11th the world got a wake-up call. Because terrorism today is no longer the mad bomber, the anarchist who throws in an explosive device into a crowd to make a point. Terrorism is going to move from the present situation to non-conventional terrorism, to nuclear terrorism. And before we reach that point, we have to remove this scourge from the Earth. And therefore, whether you\u2019re talking about the struggle here between Israelis and Palestinians, the struggle in Northern Ireland, the struggle in Sri Lanka, or any of the places where terrorism has been used, we must make a global commitment of all free democracies to eliminate this threat from the world. Period.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pilger asked: \u2018Does that include state terrorism?\u2019<\/p>\n

Gold: \u2018No country has the right to deliberately target civilians, as no organisation has a right to deliberately target civilians.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pilger: \u2018What about Israeli terrorism now?\u2019<\/p>\n

Gold: \u2018The language of terrorism, you have to be very careful with. Terrorism means deliberately targeting civilians in a kind of warfare. That\u2019s what the terrorism against Israeli schools, coffee shops, malls, has been all about. Israel specifically targets, to the best of its ability, Palestinian terrorist organisations.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pilger: \u2018All right, when an Israeli sniper shoots an old lady with a cane, trying to get into a hospital for her chemotherapy treatment, in front of a lot of the world\u2019s press for one, and frankly we\u2019d be here all day with other examples, isn\u2019t that terrorism?\u2019<\/p>\n

Gold: \u2018I don\u2019t know the case you\u2019re speaking about, but I can be convinced of one thing: an Israeli who takes aim \u2013 even an Israeli sniper \u2013 is taking aim at those engaged in terrorism. Unfortunately, in every kind of warfare, there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. Terrorism means putting the crosshairs of the sniper\u2019s rifle on a civilian deliberately.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pilger: \u2018Well that\u2019s \u2013 that\u2019s what I\u2019ve just described.\u2019<\/p>\n

Gold: \u2018That is what \u2013 no. I can tell you that did not happen.\u2019<\/p>\n

Pilger: \u2018It did happen. And \u2013 and I think that\u2019s where some people have a problem with the argument that terrorism exists on one side.\u2019<\/p>\n

So, the argument intended to exonerate Israel, \u2018Terrorism means deliberately targeting civilians in a kind of warfare\u2019, is forced to resort to the absurd claim that Israel doesn\u2019t deliberately target civilians.<\/p>\n

But anyway, Chomsky has offered a deeply disturbing response to this commonly heard argument that Western governments do not fall as low as \u2018terrorists\u2019 because they don\u2019t intentionally<\/em> set out to kill civilians. He argues that, to the extent that it exists \u2013 of course, there is overwhelming evidence that Western states do<\/em> deliberately target and massacre civilians \u2013 this lack of intentionality points to a mindset that is actually more<\/em> morally depraved even than that attributed to \u2018terrorists\u2019 who kill with intent:<\/p>\n

\u2018Namely, knowing that you are massacring them but not doing so intentionally because you don\u2019t regard them as worthy of concern. That is, you don\u2019t even care enough about them to intend to kill them.<\/p>\n

\u2018Thus, when I walk down the street, if I stop to think about it, I know I\u2019ll probably kill lots of ants, but I don\u2019t intend to kill them, because in my mind they do not even rise to the level where it matters.<\/p>\n

\u2018There are many such examples. To take one of the very minor ones, when Clinton bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical facility in Sudan, he and the other perpetrators surely knew that the bombing would kill civilians (tens of thousands, apparently). But Clinton and associates did not intend to kill them, because by the standards of Western liberal humanitarian racism, they are no more significant than ants. Same in the case of tens of millions of others.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve written about this repeatedly, for example, in [the book] \u201c9\/11<\/em>\u201c. And I\u2019ve been intrigued to see how reviewers and commentators\u2026 simply cannot even see the comments, let alone comprehend them. Since it\u2019s all pretty obvious, it reveals, again, the remarkable successes of indoctrination under freedom, and the moral depravity and corruption of the dominant intellectual culture.\u201d (Chomsky, ZNet blog, \u2018Samantha Power, Bush & Terrorism,\u2019 31 July 2007)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In conclusion, to return to Piers Morgan\u2019s question: Is Hamas a terror group?<\/p>\n

Yes, if we also accept that Israel is a terror state, or at least that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) is a terror group.<\/p>\n

The problem is that, as Chomsky says, only the first part of the assertion labelling Hamas can be seen or heard. First, no state-corporate politician or journalist would dream of describing the IDF as \u2018a terror group\u2019. Even more insidiously, members of the public who might somehow encounter the suggestion would not be able to make sense of it. As Channel 4\u2019s Alex Thomson said, the claim appears \u2018nonsensical\u2019 \u2013 how could the Royal Fusiliers possibly be considered \u2018terrorists\u2019 along with al Qaeda?<\/p>\n

Even if the suggestion could somehow defy the propaganda system to reach the public, it would be rendered invisible, inaudible by the sheer weight of patriotic conditioning. A remarkable triumph of propaganda filtering.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. In 2007,<\/em> Media Lens was awarded the <\/em>Gandhi Foundation International Peace Prize<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0We have written three co-authored books<\/em>:\u00a0Guardians of Power-The Myth of the Liberal Media <\/a>(Pluto Press, 2006),<\/em> Newspeak-In the 21st Century<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2009), and<\/em> Propaganda Blitz<\/a> (Pluto Press, 2018)<\/em>. Contacts: David Edwards: <\/em>editor@medialens.org<\/em><\/a> – David Cromwell: <\/em>editor@medialens.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 medialens.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Nov 2023 – The actual meaning of \u2018terrorism\u2019 was explained by Noam Chomsky: \u2018It\u2019s very simple: if \u201cthey\u201d do it, it\u2019s terrorism; if \u201cwe\u201d do it, it\u2019s counterterrorism. That\u2019s a historical universal.\u2019 In reality, \u2018terrorism\u2019 is a propaganda label that is slapped solely on Official Enemies and never \u2018us\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":121823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[100,2711,880,99,265,2686,492],"class_list":["post-248651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-direct-violence","tag-staged-terrorism","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-terrorism","tag-war-of-terror","tag-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248653,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248651\/revisions\/248653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}