The New York Times has recently waffled with greater gusto than an Eggo® freshly discharged from a toaster. As first spotted by a keen Twitter/X user, the Times switched its description of Hamas belligerents from “terrorists” to “gunmen” in the subhead of a piece titled “Hamas Leaves Trail of Terror in Israel.” After millions viewed the tweet, and condemned such editorializing, the Times quietly switched “gunmen” back to “terrorists.”
While this faux pas may seem minor, just think: In the midst of horrifying reports of Hamas beheading babies and burning Israeli families alive, editors at the New York Times must have had a conversation about whether they ought to refer to the perpetrators of such heinous acts as “terrorists” or “gunmen,” and then decided “terrorists” was a little too harsh.
The Times is not the only publication to soften its rhetoric on Hamas. In the Washington Post’s live feed of the bloody conflict in Israel, Hamas members are regularly referred to as “militants.” The word “terrorist” is made conspicuous by its absence.
The primeval urge on the left to safeguard the narrative of oppressor vs. oppressed is keeping many from calling Hamas what it is — a terrorist group devoted to eradicating Jews from the face of the earth. While many impoverished Palestinians may view Hamas as the least bad option out of the few bad options available to them, this does not at all excuse or negate the evil mission core to the organization.
The radical-chic models of colonialist sociology simply do not apply to Israel. The state of Israel came about as the return of a people to their ancestral homeland after genocidal decimation — it is intellectually dishonest to equate the Jewish people and the land of Israel with, say, the British and the West Indies or the Dutch and South Africa.
Oh the Times, ever and always embodying the limits of the liberal virtue of tolerance.