Mirroring Hamas: Harriet Sherwood refers to terrorist suicide bombings as “operations”

Harriet Sherwood’s report on one Gaza man’s suicide (Palestinian man dies setting himself alight, September 3rd) represented a classic Guardian narrative – contextualizing the act in a manner clearly suggesting that fault lies with Israel.

Sherwood writes the following:

“A Gaza man has died after setting himself alight, apparently in protest over his family’s dire living conditions.

His father told reporters in Gaza that his son wanted to draw attention to the family’s poverty. “I asked my son to go and look for a job, because I don’t have a job and we don’t have any source for living,” said Abu Mohamed Abu Nada.”

“The unemployment rate in Gaza is 29%, and rises to 58% among young people aged between 20 and 24, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Eight out of 10 households are dependent on some kind of aid, and 39% of the 1.6 million-strong population live below the poverty line.

Overcrowding, lengthy and frequent power cuts, unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and inadequate medical care are features of daily life in Gaza for much of the population.

Israel enforced a tight blockade of Gaza for four years after Hamas took control of the area in June 2006, banning most imports, exports and the movement of people…”

So, we’re to believe that the blockade causes unemployment and poor living conditions, which, in turn, resulted in Abu Nada’s suicide.

Except that the unemployment rate in Gaza in the roughly six years preceding the 2007 blockade hovered between 30 and 40% (World Bank Report, page 42), indicating that there is no statistical evidence of an increase in unemployment as a result of the blockade.

But, holding Israel to blame for the decision of one man in Gaza to take his own life pales in comparison to the language Sherwood employs in the final paragraph.

“Suicide, which is forbidden under Islam, is rare in Gaza despite operations by suicide bombers during the second Intifada.”[emphasis added]

Note that Sherwood didn’t use the word “attacks”, which would denote the violent behavior of the Palestinian perpetrators, but “operations”, which imputes a legitimate military-type nature, and indeed is a term which is widely used by Hamas.

The euphemism “operation” was, for instance, used in an announcement on Hamas’ military website on the ‘occasion’ of the group’s 24th anniversary, in a headline which read “Al Qassam carried out 1106 operations, killed 1365 Zionists“.

Is Sherwood concerned that even the term “militant attack”, which she typically uses instead of “terrorist attack, is too laden with moral judgement?

The language used by Guardian reporters is not some academic detail, nor does it represent semantic minutiae.  It is a window into their institutional political orientation – a clear indication of the broad moral understanding of the world they wish to convey to readers.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Islamist terror groups use the euphemism “martyrdom operations” because it accurately characterizes a belief in the righteousness of their cause, and a corresponding lack of human empathy for their Jewish victims.

Harriet Sherwood’s decision to mirror such language, at the very least, demonstrates a disturbing degree of sympathy for such groups’ moral reasoning. 

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