1y ago

Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

www.bbc.co.uk Why BBC doesn't call Hamas militants 'terrorists' - John Simpson

It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn, writes the BBC's World Affairs editor.

I guess not strictly news - but with all of the vitriol I have seen in discussions on the Israel situation, that have boiled down to arguments over wording, I feel that this take from the BBC is worthy of some discussion.

Mods, feel free to remove if this is not newsy enough.

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174 comments

I don't think you need to call hamas what they are, a far right fundamentalist extremist terrorist organisation. Their actions speak for themselves.
- What they mean as that they could also say Israel is a terrorist state. That’s what some people think. And some people, specially those who have friends or family who have been killed in Palestina, might say that Hamas are defending their people and are not terrorists.
  But you and me, citizens without voice, can call them terrorists (that’s what they are) but doing so we are somehow chosing a band in a conflict.
  
  I'm not sure I'd call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state.
  If you live in Gaza, you really don't have a lot to lose by attacking Israeli non-combatants, because you have no hope, and the Israeli gov't keeps going farther and farther to the right. Gaza looks a lot like the Warsaw ghettos prior to rounding all the Jews up and murdering them. The uprisings in the Warsaw ghetto were punished with the same kind of wildly disproportionate force as we're already seeing Israel use against Gaza.
  Hamas and Palestinian militants were, and are, wrong to target and murder non-combatants. And, at the same time, Israel has been doing exactly the same fucking thing for 20-odd years now; from 2008 through 2020, more than 120,000 Palestinians--mostly non-combatants--were wounded or killed by the Israeli military. In that same time period, 6,000 Israelis were wounded or killed by Palestinian militants.
  Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
  As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
  
  As an aside, the parallels between how Israel has treated Palestinians, and how the US has treated Native Americans is uncomfortable.
  Which is even more ironic when you realise that that's exactly where a certain mustachioed German dictator got his ideas from.
  
  IIRC, Hitler originally wanted to ship all the Jews out. Except that no one else wanted them either. Extermination became the "logical" conclusion.
  
  I’m not sure I’d call Israel a terrorist state, but absolutely an apartheid state. [...] Israel can not claim to be a democracy, because they refuse to give Palestinians a voice in government at all.
  There are two million Arab citizens of Israel, the vast majority of whom are Muslim. They vote. There are Arab Muslims in the Knesset.
  This is a somewhat different situation from that of blacks in apartheid South Africa, who were denied civil rights on the basis of their race and ancestry.
  I'm not saying Israeli society treats Arab Israeli citizens fairly or that there isn't social discrimination. I haven't been there; and from all reports there certainly is. But I think you're exaggerating ... or else understating how bad "actual" (South African) apartheid was.
  
  "Arab citizens of Israel" =/= Palestinians.
  Given that Israelis can, and do, burn out Palestinians in the occupied areas in order to seize their land, and Israeli authorities do nothing, and even help the arsonists, I don't think that I'm overstating that. Moreover, the Arab voices in the Knesset are a minuscule minority; I think it's something like a total of 5 seats, while Likud and their far-right allies have 63 seats.
  
  While I get what you mean, I don't think it should automatically mean (even a lot of people think it does) that you can either say Hamas is a terrorist group or Israel is a terrorist state.
  In my own view both are terrorist, both commit atrocities and the result of that are innocent lives lost from both sides.
  I despise centrism so saying that hurts a little bit on the inside, but this is one of the rare cases where fighting at all is meaningless and both sides that are fighting (and commiting atrocities) are in the fault.

174 comments