Columns, International, Politics

Yes, Hamas is Legally, Morally, and Factually a Terrorist Organization

Below is my column in the New York Post on the Associated Press guideline for reporters to avoid calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Voice of America and other media outlets have made the same decision. This is not about supporting the Palestinian cause. It is about correctly describing a group that commits terrorist attacks as a terrorist organization.

Here is the column:

Confucius once said that “the beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.”

That does not appear to be the approach of the Associated Press this week after the media organization told its reporters not to call Hamas fighters “terrorists” after they massacred civilians, raped women, and took a couple hundred hostages from Israel on Oct. 7.

The Voice of America issued its own instruction to avoid calling Hamas “terrorists.”

According to the AP, these fighters are to be called “militants” because the term “terrorist” has “become politicized.”

But there is nothing “politicized” in recognizing that Hamas intentionally targeted civilians, including mowing down unarmed participants at a peace concert.

They burned civilians alive in their homes and raped women.

They intentionally and systemically took civilian hostages, including children and the elderly.

The acts defined the actors. These were terrorist acts and those who committed them were by definition terrorists.

The International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism defines terrorism as “any … act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

The United Nations Security Council specifically includes with this definition “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages.”

Nevertheless, the Associated Press reportedly issued an “Israel-Hamas Topical Guide,” which noted that “terrorism and terrorist have become politicized, and often are applied inconsistently.” Thus “the AP is not using the terms for specific actions or groups, other than in direct quotations.”

This isn’t the first time the AP has made strikingly artificial language choices.

For example, AP reporters were told to avoid using the word “surge” to describe the record number of migrants crossing the border.

Likewise, when there was violence and looting in various cities after the George Floyd killing, AP told its reporters to use “milder terms” like “unrest” rather than “riots.”

Yet when it came to January 6, AP routinely referred to the riot as an “insurrection” (here, here, here).

Notably, in one article titled “Riot? Insurrection? Words Matter in Describing the Capitol Siege,” the AP noted that other mainstream media were using “riot” but also raised the possible terms “sedition” and “coup attempt.”

For the record, I criticized President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was still giving it and wrote that his theory on the election and the certification challenge was unfounded.

I denounced the riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. However, it was not an insurrection, in my view. It was a protest that became a riot.

AP and some other outlets do not want to call it a riot not because it isn’t accurate, but because it is not sufficiently vilifying.

Conversely, the media are often eager to avoid “riot” as too judgmental.

Reporters actually told a chief of police not to use the word “riot” in reference to violence by protesters against police.

Similarly, as billions in property damages were occurring in various cities, Craig Melvin, an MSNBC host and co-anchor of “Today,” tweeted a “guide” that the images “on the ground” were not to be described as rioting but rather “protests.”

He noted, “This will guide our reporting in MN. While the situation on the ground in Minneapolis is fluid, and there has been violence, it is most accurate at this time to describe what is happening there as ‘protests’ — not riots.”

Polls have shown that most of the public view January 6 as a riot.

A CBS poll showed that 76% viewed it for what it was, a “protest gone too far.” The view that it was an actual “insurrection” was far less settled, with almost half rejecting the claim, a division breaking along partisan lines.

Obviously, people can disagree, but this would seem an obvious example where the AP would refrain from using the most loaded term of “insurrection” given the legal and factual contradictions in such usage.

The concern is that AP is showing bias in the use of such terms. Journalism schools now teach young reporters to follow an advocacy model in “leaving neutrality behind.”

Likewise, Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.”

Recently, former executive editor for the Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward released their survey of leading journalists and outlets and also concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Downie explained that news organizations now “believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects.

“And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

That view was echoed by Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, who declared, “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

The response of the public has been consistent and clear: Trust in the media is at an all-time low.

Roughly 40% of the public has zero trust in the media. Likewise, 50% of Americans believe that the media lie to them to advance their own agendas.

Much of that distrust has occurred over what were viewed as false descriptions.

The best example was the “Let’s Go Brandon” incident.

In that case, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast was doing an interview with race car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race.

During the interview, Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud-and-clear chants of “F—k Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’ ”

“Let’s Go Brandon” has become a type of Yankee Doodling of the media by the public. It reflected an exasperation with framing and revisionism by the media in describing events.

There is no greater disconnect than describing an attack killing hundreds of unarmed civilians and taking hundreds of hostages as the acts of “militants.”

There is wisdom that comes from calling things by the right name. This was terrorism.

Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

250 thoughts on “Yes, Hamas is Legally, Morally, and Factually a Terrorist Organization”

  1. During the 90 days that began on April 6 in 1994, Rwanda experienced the most intensive slaughter in this blood-filled century

    Families murdered in their home, people hunted down as they fled by soldiers and militia, through farmland and woods as if they were animals.

    “All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.” clinton lies

    He had inadequately reacted to the genocide, he said, because he had not really known what had been happening in Rwanda.

    a. As the Archive notes, “beginning April 8th, the massacres in Rwanda were reported on the front pages of major newspapers and on radio and television broadcasts almost daily, including the major papers read by U.S. officials and policy elites.” And at that time human rights activists in Washington–who had close relationships with national security adviser Tony Lake and staff members of Clinton’s national security council–were pounding on the doors of the White House demanding action and suggesting options.
    THE NATION
    David Corn

    And Trump is a lying bum?
    And Trump is a lying bum?
    MY G-D!
    Our radical Left-Wing communists remain utterly silent.
    We owe a real apology to those poor people. We were legally committed to help them, to intervene. My country is a disgrace. I am ashamed of America.

  3. All Recall how, after the Waukesha Christmas Parade Massacre, the MSM immediately labeled it a “Parade Crash” like it was a traffic accident!
    Since it was a blatant racist attack that didn’t fit The Narrative, the Media Coverage quickly evaporated!

  5. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation.”

    Whose throats? Female broadcasters. Why? Because the morality police didn’t like how they dressed. Which nation? Iran? — No. Afghanistan? — No. *Gaza*.

    Hamas is the Taliban in Gaza. It is a brutal dictatorship that enforces Sharia law. There are no rights in Gaza — no right to free speech, to assemble, protest. There is no freedom of religion or of the press. There is no such thing as education. There is only Sharia religious law force fed to young students.

    When you refuse to call a terrorist government terrorists, when you protest to support that dictatorship — you endorse its barbarism against its own people. And you endorse its brutal murder of Israelis.

  6. To refuse to brand the Hamas invaders as terrorists is to do a disservice not only to accuracy but to the terrorists themselves, as terror, realistically the only weapon left in their arsenal, is obviously what they intended to deliver. The real question is whether this latest tragedy is just another bump-in-the-road for Israel’s divide and diminish policy, or will the brutality and horror it has engendered force them to treat Palestinians as a people rather than an infestation.

    1. Pretty despicable of you to blame the victim, especially when Israel has time and again been willing to exchange land for peace but the Palestinians will not accept the very existence of Israel under any circumstances.

      You might as well say the Jews of Europe “engendered” Nazi brutality by being so good with money.

    2. …will the brutality and horror it has engendered force them to treat Palestinians as a people rather than an infestation.

      You likely would defend yourself if a group of belligerents stood outside your house, aimed rifles and started shooting at you, your spouse, children and loved ones inside your house. For the sake of simplicity (and for the lurkers, to whom I am actually addressing my comment), let’s assume you have a spouse, children, loved ones and own a home where you raise a family. You likely would not open the drapes, turn the lights inside your home, nor line your family into a straight line so that your adversaries can shoot everyone dead with one single shot apiece. No, you would likely throw a weapon into the hands of each of your family members, you personally would possibly reach for your handy dandy AR-15 with cases of ammo purchased recently as whites, hispanics, blacks and jews have done in America, and instruct everyone to shoot your adversaries dead. You would roar like a lion, thump your chest, your children would shoot the b*stards dead, and then you would pour a glass of Malbec Wine, vintage 2016, Mendoza County, Argentina, to celebrate. It is a kill or be killed scenario. This isn’t that difficult.

      Israel should do likewise against Gaza and West Bank occupants. These occupants are Hamas enablers, sympathizers, and members. When Hamas kills Jews, as they have since Oct 7 in vivo, they use the phones of their dead Jewish victims to call their parents to tell them they killed Jews. Hamas was elected by all of Gaza/West Bank occupants decades ago to govern them. Those occupants know exactly what Hamas does. In fact, this is the same argument the Left Wing in America use on “Whites” regarding “reparations” to blacks. No one living today in America is responsible for blacks enduring slavery in America. Yet, the Leftists thunder daily that all Whites Ameicans are guilty for the sins against blacks in America >150+ years ago. So it follows, the occupants of Gaza and West Bank are Hamas. The occupants support Hamas, cheer for Hamas, have no intention of leaving Gaza/West Bank even after being warned by Israel repeatedly these past several weeks. They wish, desire, demand to die side by side with Hamas because they are one in the same, just like the Left say that all Whites are racists by virtue of “white privilege” (snort). So be it.

      Israel should drive all of the occupants of Gaza/West Bank into the Med Sea, Egypt, Lebanon, or into the ground, dead or alive, knowing that if they fail to do so, the occupants of Gaza/West Bank will never stop until every Jew is dead. The occupants keep reminding Jews of the latter. As I have stated on here many times, this is in the history of Muslims, dating back to 700 AD. Muslims today occupy regions of the Med Sea / Middle East, only because they killed Christians and Jews to displace them. Jews need their land as promised by God to them in the Old Testament. This written testimony, as recorded by writers 1000 BC, predates the creation of Islam circa 650 AD.

      Memo to Israelis: carpet bomb all of Gaza/West Bank, or else they will carpet bomb you

      St Thomas Aquinas’ just war theory applies:

      In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. Moreover it is not the business of a private individual to summon together the people, which has to be done in wartime. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Romans 13:4): “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil”; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority (Psalm 81:4): “Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner”; and for this reason Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 75): “The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority.”

      Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says (QQ. in Hept., qu. x, super Jos.): “A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”

      Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. [The words quoted are to be found not in St. Augustine’s works, but Can. Apud. Caus. xxiii, qu. 1): “True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.” For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): “The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war.”

      https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3040.htm

    3. To refuse to brand the Hamas invaders as terrorists is to do a disservice not only to accuracy but to the terrorists themselves, as terror, realistically the only weapon left in their arsenal, is obviously what they intended to deliver.

      Actually, to refuse to brand them as terrorists is to ignore the very charter that guides their purpose for existence. Don’t be fooled by their 2017 amended charter. They’re still genocidal monsters. https://palwatch.org/storage/documents/hamas%20new%20policy%20document%20010517.pdf

      The real question for you is where are you getting your magic mushrooms?

      On the Destruction of Israel:

      —————————–

      ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will

      obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.’ (Preamble)

      Rejection of a Negotiated Peace Settlement:

      ——————————————-

      ‘[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and

      international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of

      the Islamic Resistance Movement… Those conferences are no more than

      a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of

      Islam… There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by

      Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a

      waste of time, an exercise in futility.’ (Article 13)

  7. Prof. Turley, I find it interesting–nay, distressing–that for years the left has been warning us about white supremacists being the anti-semites we should fear, yet it’s Muslims and Muslim supporters who are against Jews vis-à-vis their BS claims that they are against Israel, not Jews. It’s anti-Semitism and, yes, Hamas are terrorists. They are the new Nazis who Jews should fear.

  8. Professor Turley cites: Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.” An interesting view of American journalism because objectivity has always been viewed as sort of mythical. At best it has been acknowledged by its most renown practioners as no more, nor less objective than expertise in any other form of narrative practice, especially law. Part science, lots of art. That at most, objectivity is a means, a tool, for shaping discourse designed to persuade based on inferences from evidence at hand. The issue here one of the AP’s authority or its credibility. Given that disinterested impartiality in judgment is an ideal (we are all Kantians) advocacy journalism remains the true ground of evolving news reporting.

  9. Jonathan: Well, he has done it again. DJT was in Judge Engoron’s courtroom yesterday in NY to hear and see the testimony of Michael Cohen. DJT scowled a lot at Cohen. During a break outside the courtroom DJT told the assembled press: “This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is”. In a previous episode Engoron fined DJT $5,000 for doxing his clerk by name on Truth Social. Apparently, DJT’s latest comments got back to Judge Engoron. After the hearing resumed Engoron called DJT to the witness stand and asked DJT who he was referring to outside the courtroom. DJT replied: “You and Cohen”. Engoron was having none of it because the person “sitting alongside” of him is his clerk. Engoron replied: “As the trier of fact, I find the witness is not credible” and this time imposed a $10,000 fine. Engoron also warned DJT that if he continued to attack judges and clerks there would be “severe consequences”. DJT then stormed out of the courtroom with his Secret Service detail chasing him.

    It is unlikely DJT will show up again at his civil fraud trial. But who knows. He craves attention and never misses an opportunity to get press coverage. But this time that stakes are high. If convicted DJT could lose his real estate empire. This is a bench trial with no jury. A prudent defendant should not want to alienate the judge when everything he holds dear could go up in smoke. But that is exactly what DJT is doing. I think DJT realizes he has already lost the NY AG Letitia James case so he is acting like a caged animal–striking out in every direction. So I would expect DJT to continue his bizarre and threatening antics right up to the point when Engoron pronounces judgment against him.

    1. YAWN

      That judge is a pedophile lawless ex cab driver, who brags about sideswiping constitutional rights.

    2. Can you say impeachment and conviction?

      A sane, objective, and impartial judge who subscribes to constitutional American freedom and free enterprise would have thrown this political clown show and Soviet-style “show trial out before the ink was dry on the docket.

    3. The post is about Hamas, terrorism, and murdered Jews, not Trump. Why don’t you start your own blog and you can have your obsessive rants about Trump all day?

  10. Someone comments on this thread:

    “Turley claims that the public distrusts media and many believe it lies to them. This is directly attributable to the “media” he works for (by which I believe from the rest of the comment the someone means the Fox News Channel but Turley writes for many media outlets).”

    1. The distrust of the media is not a “Turley claim.” Gallup and other mainstream research groups have found a steady decrease in trust of the media over the last 50-60 years. It is now at its lowest point ever (matching the previous all time low during the Hillary Clinton media blitz of 2016). https://news.gallup.com/poll/512861/media-confidence-matches-2016-record-low.aspx
    2. The steady decrease began 25 years BEFORE the creation of Fox News Channel (plus it always amazes me that leftists make this claim about FNC when fewer than 1% of adults even watch it; do leftists believe that this measly 1%-* of Americans have some inordinate amount of control over the other 75% of Americans who distrust the media?)
    ___________
    *Per Nielsen last time I checked but it’s been a few months

    1. Dennis Byron,
      Well said and interesting comment.
      I have had several comment that I am some pro-Trump loving Fox News watcher when I have stated many times on the good professor’s blog that I have not had cable in over 10 years. I do not watch Fox or MSM in general but get my news from Independent news sources. And I did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020, but third party. S. Meyer and myself had a long and interesting conversation about it.
      Yet, Fox news seems to be the boogeyman they love to pin everything on.
      Heck, as I understand it, leftist liberals watch more of Fox news than most conservatives.

      1. Upstatefarmer, spot-on. I’m amazed at how well-versed the communist commenters are regarding what Fox News broadcasts. I don’t watch Fox, but it’s interesting to see how much they do.

      2. Upstate, like you I got rid of cable media years and years ago (I actually have a cable coming into my house for the local broadcast channels and for the Internet) and also like you I did not vote for Trump (in fact I have not voted in any national election since 1992 because my vote for Clinton then was such a disappointment in terms of what he promised vs what he supported-*). I am totally apolitical… I think they’re all hacks based on years involved in local nonpartisan government activity where I have lived

        In my now coming up on 20-year-long retirement, I have done and continue to do a lot of research into and helping people with their Social Security and Medicare decisions. I found in doing that research that almost anything the left says about those two subjects, the opposite is true. I subsequently believe (but not based on rigorous research) that that is true of anything the left says.

        (I think you are probably right about leftists watching FNC but they probably don’t admit that to Nielsen so aren’t part of the 1% 🙂 )
        ________
        *Years later however I did thank Clinton for signing Medicare Part C into law and conceiving the Part D that Bush later signed (and which Biden ended last year)

    2. There’s one indisputable fact in this equation: Fox, News Max, Breitbart, and other alt-right news organizations constantly beat the drum that mainstream media LIE, that they can’t be trusted or only tell half-truths, all because they don’t harp on things like the ‘Hunter Biden Scandal”, they didn’t push the “Big Lie”, they don’t constantly defend Trump or attack Hillary Clinton, they don’t carry Trump rallies, and they don’t push conspiracy theories Mainstream media don’t call Biden “senile” or a “criminal” or accuse him of being the head of a “Biden Crime Family”. Also, PBS, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, et al, NEVER accuse those alt-right media of lying or suggest to their viewers that they shouldn’t watch. That fact alone is very telling if you were trying to decide WHO is spreading propaganda for political reasons. It’s not mainstream media, who are populated by real journalists, not ministers of propaganda. It’s sad that so many people fall for their lies.

      1. Huh? There is NO equation. There is the gold standard of media research saying that only 1% or less of adults watch Fox News Channel. Maybe if you add all the rest of the things you mentioned which I’ve never heard of, it becomes 1.5%.

        So back to the question I asked and that you seem to be dodging: “Do you believe that this measly 1.5% of Americans have some inordinate amount of control over the other 64.5% of Americans who also distrust the media?”

        Why do you seem to have trouble grasping the point that if a person does not watch media outlet X, it cannot be propaganized by it or otherwise be influenced by it. The vast vast vast percentage of people who do not trust the media according to Gallop are watching “PBS, xxxxx, CBS, ABC, NBC, xxx, et al,” not Fox News Channel (I had to x out MSNBC and CNN from your list because even fewer people watch them… their adult vieweship does not even add up to Fox’s COMBINED)

    3. Your numbers are off.

      From Pew Research (Nov. 2019 study), 39% of adults got political news from Fox within the past week. Fox is not just a channel, it is a media organization with a website, etc.

      https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/08/five-facts-about-fox-news/

      Brookings (2023): 25% of GOP are Fox consumers (though, the other options were not mutually exclusive – i.e., “social media consumer” could be reading a Fox article):

      https://www.brookings.edu/articles/whether-he-debates-or-not-trump-owes-a-lot-to-fox-news/

      And, as you know, Fox’s primetime hosts are providers of opinion (or in the words of Tucker’s lawyers, “entertainment”), not fact-based news.

      1. Please, don’t cloud the issue with facts when Gigi has her “indisputable” reality.

      2. To the person who is too cowardly to use her name

        In finding that only about 1% of adults in the United States watch Fox News Channel, I prefer to use the apolitical gold standard of media research – Nielsen – rather than the two far left wing sources you posted (and in the process you mixed apples and minerals with the Brookings blather – my research sources is talking about ALL adults, yours is talking about registered Republicans) https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-cable-news-nielsen-ratings-for-q3-2023/538247/ and you totally misquoted the Pew Research)

        But even if your Brookings source is half right, back to my original question which the left totally avoids: “Do you believe that this measly 10% of Americans have some inordinate amount of control over the other 65% of Americans who also distrust the media?”

  11. It was terrorism but so were the blm “riots” and they were riots bc i heard of a guy who sss. $150k peace of equipment was destroyed and the insurance didn’t cover it …. bc it was a riot. So yay wirds do matter. Bw. Who let the dawg out? Who who who? Re.

  12. Cooper Union college in NY is the same school that recently hired the machete wielding “arts” adjunct instructor, a Marxist left wing pinko. This is precisely what Democrats and the Left believe: moral relativism. For them there are no objective truths, no absolutes, everything is defined by a whim, their whim of course.

    Jews are being hunted down at a library. This is insane!!!!!

    Democrats did this.

    Jewish students take refuge in library and lock themselves in while pro-Palestinian demonstrators POUND on the door to gain entry at NYC’s liberal Cooper Union college

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12673287/cooper-union-jewish-students-hide-library-pro-palestine-demonstration.html

    1. Can’t wait for the MSM to report the story as – ‘Mob of Jewish students lock pro-Palestinian students out of library, preventing them from prepping for upcoming exams.’

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