Unabashed Moral Equivalency
A recent post pointed out the Chicago Tribune‘s use of the word “militant” to describe both peaceful demonstrators and murderous gunmen. This freewheeling usage of “militant” erodes the word’s meaning, but worse, it corrodes our understanding of the difference between murderers and protesters in the Middle East conflict.
Now, the Associated Press’ Gavin Rabinowitz strikes another blow at this difference. Writing today about an Israeli operation to remove Jewish anti-disengagement activists sqatting in an abandoned hotel, Rabinovitz stated:
The showdown was an early test of
Israel’s ability to rein in its own militants after pressuring the Palestinians to do the same.
With this rhetoric, Rabinowitz unabashedly pushes the idea that there is an equivalence between Israeli protesters — whom he describes as “settlers repeatedly arrested for harassing Palestinians and soldiers” — and Palestinian members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, et al who have murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians with bombs, rockets, mortars, and gunfire.
Because there is a very real difference between “harassers” and murderers, there must be a difference in the words used to describe the two categories of people.
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