As some news headlines on the recent Arab terror spree have demonstrated, the media’s capacity to use obfuscatory language to characterize Palestinian terror and extremism is at times quite extraordinary. Not only are editors often reluctant to use the ‘subjective’ word “terrorist” to describe extremists who attack Jewish civilians, but they also often insist on using words which obscure the malevolent nature of such acts.
Here’s the headline of an article in the Oct. 27 edition of The Economist:
The word restive is an adjective which describes someone “unable to keep still or silent and becoming increasingly difficult to control, especially because of impatience, dissatisfaction, or boredom.”
However, as the article explains, one of the “restive” Palestinians who faces home demolition as part of the government’s new policy in response to the recent spate of terror attacks is none other than Alaa Abu Jamal. Abu Jamal is the Palestinian arrested earlier in the month after he intentionally drove his car into a Jerusalem bus stop and then hacked a religious Jew to death with a meat cleaver.
A video of the attack is one of the most brutal and shocking we’ve ever seen.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgpGBBW3YZY]
Whilst the question raised by The Economist – on the efficacy of such home demolitions – is legitimate, it doesn’t seem to be asking too much to expect influential media outlets to use plain, accurate non-euphemistic words when referring to people who engage in such grotesque acts of racially motivated violence.
