It’s interesting what people assume.
For those few who regularly read what I write 🙂 you’ll have noticed that I’ve been very careful for years not to refer to members of Hamas, PLO, Hezbollah, etc, as terrorists, especially after Oct 7.
I prefer to name their crimes:
– murder
– kidnapping
– r*pe
– extortion
– theft
I don’t believe that committing these crimes supposedly in the name of some ideology makes the crimes any more significant than ones committed in the name of profit or pleasure. Giving them a special category seems like endowing them with a perverse nobility.
Having watched how people and politicians use the term “terrorist” for decades, it’s become apparent that it’s nothing more than a vague rhetorical device, now mobilized by all sides of many conflicts, and crucially it is utilized by the Israeli and American governments to justify placing someone accused of committing particular crimes, squarely outside of the justice system.
I firmly believe that no one should be outside the justice system, that everyone has the right to a fair trial, and that all criminals should be held accountable in courts of law.
(I derived little satisfaction from the extrajudicial killing of Sinwar, for example. I would much rather he had been tried and faced the law.)
Words matter.
They shape our perception of and relationship to reality.
I don’t think choosing better words replaces the need for further actions to build a better world, but those actions start with the words we choose.