As more details emerge about the shocking Hamas attack on Saturday, we speak with Rabbi David Basior of Kadima Reconstructionist Community, a progressive Jewish group in Seattle focused on social justice. Basior’s former congregant Hayim Katsman was among those killed in Israel by Hamas militants who stormed Kibbutz Holit. The 32-year-old was a gardener, mechanic and peace activist who worked with anti-occupation groups. During the attack, he shielded a woman from bullets with his own body, saving her life at the cost of his own. Katsman’s family have said that he would not have wanted his death to fuel retribution against Palestinians. “Life is the utmost. It is the most core teaching that I have received from my tradition, from my ancestors,” says Basior, who evokes the phrase “never again,” used in remembrance of the Holocaust and other genocides, and says that precept means the violence against Palestinians “must be spoken out against.”
Israel has been calling Palestinian fighters “terrorists” to justify its slaughter of Gaza.
Breakthrough News journalist, Eugene Puryear, rips this narrative apart, explaining the long history of oppressed and colonized people being demonized and called terrorists and savage to justify the continued occupation of those people. No different than the Native resistance to American colonization, slave rebellions in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution, Palestinians are resisting Israeli colonialism, not out of bloodlust as the media has portrayed it, but because of decades of land thefts, massacres, second-class citizenship and the denial of the right to return that has persisted for decades.
The word is useless for describing violent acts in a meaningful way. It can mean making children traumatized with bombs, or making HOA members afraid their property value will decrease with graffiti, vastly different actions and outcomes.
No one who wants to be taken seriously should use the word “terrorist” in a descriptive context. It is not a meaningful word, it’s a noise people make when the word they actually mean is socially inappropriate or politically inopportune.
I agree Iran uses fear to control its citizens, but that’s a pretty facile statement in an English speaking community. How do you feel about Anastasija Kukhta or Mikhail Lazakovich, both convicted of terrorism?
as in anyone espousing the ideology of instilling fear as a weapon.
I wish that was what the word “terrorist” means.
It has always meant anyone using asymmetric tactics to oppose states or capitalism, both violent and non-violent. If it simply meant using fear as a weapon, then every state that has prisons and police would be terrorist.
The standard usage of the word is so hypocritical that it has become an authoritarian allegiance-signifying pejorative without any deeper meaning.
The Israeli army has expressed that they are “very sorry” for the death of Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was killed in an Israeli shelling at the Lebanon border.
Despite the IDF’s expression of regret, the vehicle Abdallah was in was clearly marked as a media car. The incident occurred while Abdallah and other journalists were covering ongoing clashes at the border.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Israel’s actions, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed condolences, emphasizing the need for journalists to be protected.
“This is unconscionable and will leave an indelible stain,” said one critic, who urged “resignations and collective action” to protest the reported policy.