Pro-Israel Media has Certainly Redefined Terrorism

By Roqayah Chamseddine

"The state of Israel has lost its moral code. It has forgotten what is at the heart of the Jewish nation. We are reminding them."; so begins the lamentation of one Yehudi Tzadik, the pseudonym of a so-called "righteous Jew" defending the destruction of Palestinian places of worship.

In a recent outbreak of price-tagging, a policy defined as an act of violence targeting the Palestinian population carried out by Israeli settlers, the words "Death To Arabs" are seen scrawled on the torched walls of a Palestinian mosque - Wednesday, in the West Bank village of Bruqin, near Salfit a Muslim place of worship was set on fire - and then - less than a single day apart from one another, another house of worship, Al-Nour Mosque in the village of Burqa, near Ramallah, was also attacked - the interior of the local mosque was submersed with petrol and then set on fire.
According to Palestine's Ma'an News Agency "the attack [on Al-Nour Mosque] comes a day after Jewish extremists torched a 13th century mosque in Jerusalem, spraying "Death to the Arabs" on the building."

According to Ma'an News, Israeli settlers also set a tractor and vehicles belonging to Palestinians aflame.

As per a poll conducted in March of 2011 by Israel's Ynet news outlet highlights that "... 46% of Israelis believe that “price tag” attacks are justified to a certain extent. A large majority are supportive of such price-tag attacks, with 70% of Orthodox and 71% religious nationalists; most traditional, national-religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews believe these actions are justified."

Though many are parading the idea that these events are random, isolated and atypical, it is becoming more and more apparent that the attacks on Palestinians are seemingly characteristic of Israel's extremist settler population.

According to Israel's daily newspaper Haaretz, in October, on Yom Kippur, graves were desecrated with anti-Arab slogans in two cemeteries in Jaffa - belonging to both Christian and Muslims.

In November some 15 Muslim gravestones in Jerusalem were found defiled with the words "Death to Arabs" painted upon the flat headstones in bold red.

In June of 2011 Israeli security forces detained members of a Bedouin village in Northern Occupied Palestine who were throwing stones, protesting the burning of a mosque in the Bedouin village of Tuba Zangaria. That same month, the words "Kahane war right" were scrawled on the exterior of a the Abu al-Abed restaurant in Jaffa, established in 1949 in Jaffa's Yefet street; the phrase is in reference to Meir Kahane, the late American-Israel ultra-nationalist who advocated the forced deportation of nearly all Arabs from any and all land controlled by the Israeli government.

Though Palestinians are routinely rounded up and collectively arrested for throwing stones, Israeli settlers are rarely, if ever, detained for crimes against Palestinians. Also, if a settler is detained Israeli officials acknowledge that only a few arrests lead to actual indictments.

The list of attacks carried out under the 'price-tag' policy of Israeli settlers is almost inexhaustible; a laundry-list of crimes committed against Palestinians is simply an online inquiry away for those interested in documenting settler brutality. Yet seldom are Israeli's who commit said misdeeds referred to as "terrorists" in the mainstream media. Fundamentally defined, terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion, for political purposes. Yet terrorism is a label scarcely pinned upon those committing acts of terror, unless of course they are Arabs, Palestinians or Muslims.

An article posted on December 13 by CNN's Michal Zippori documents 50 right-wing Israeli's who attacked an Israeli military base, the Ephraim Regional Headquarters, referring to the Israeli extremists as Jewish 'terrorists', in single quotations. The piece by Zippori further shows how contentious it is to refer to Jewish settlers in Israel as terrorists, having to refer back to Israeli officials who termed the act "Jewish terrorism." Attacking an Israeli military base in this case may carry grounds for accusing mentioned Israeli settlers of being terrorists, attacking Palestinians and their places of worship on the other hand is undoubtedly problematic, especially for Western outlets promoting the orientalist 'bad Arab' portrait most commonly found when discussing the Palestine-Israel conflict.

All in all, we see that terrorism, for a select few, has been redefined; instead of applying this term towards all those carrying out acts of intimidation we see Arabs having to carry this badge of shame, regardless of their crimes. If an Arab throws a stone at a tank they are swiftly branded a "terrorist" by the mainstream media, primarily the US media. If a Jewish settler sets a house of worship aflame, scrawling "Death to Arabs" upon its sacred walls they are dismissed as "extremists" or simply "ultra-nationalist activists" - further proving that the pro-Israel media has certainly redefined terrorism, forcing into the confines of their imperialist fantasy.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

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