Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Redefining Terrorism

One of the worst things about the culture we live in is the attack on words. Not just the fact that calling a handicapped person handicapped can wind you up in PC classes for five years, but the insistence by MSM not to describe Muslim Jew-hating terrorists as Muslim Jew-hating terrorists.

THE international media have already morphed the horrific slaughter in Mumbai into the murky realm of euphemism and apologetics.

Al Jazeera and The Guardian label the terrorists "gunmen"; CNN calls them "militants." Some analysts identified the underlying cause as the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Psychological guru Deepak Chopra called it the result of "collateral damage" from the US war on terrorism and the Iraq war.

But how does the especially bloodthirsty attack on Mumbai's Nariman-Chabad House fit into this puzzle palace?

The New York Times theorized that Chabad House may have been an "accidental hostage scene." The BBC initially chose to hide the Jewish character of the target by describing it as just "an office building." Al Jazeera refused to show Chabad House as the site of the carnage. Some Western media outlets unsympathetically labeled victims there as "ultra-Orthodox" or "missionaries."

Dana has a post on the too-obvious nature of the attacks and how journalists conspicuously won't call the attacks what they are: anti-semitic and anti-Western.