Associated Press Reporters Can Only Describe Hamas Terrorists as Militants, ‘Fighters, Attackers, or Combatants’
Hamas is a terrorist organization filled with terrorists. It’s that simple.
The Associated Press will not allow its reporters to identify Hamas as a terrorist organization.
It’s weird because the AP even admitted that the government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
There is so much wrong in the Israel-Hamas Topical Guide (AP’s emphasis):
terrorism
The calculated use of violence, especially against civilians, to create terror to disrupt and demoralize societies for political ends.
The terms terrorism and terrorist have become politicized, and often are applied inconsistently. Because they can be used to label such a wide range of actions and events, and because the debate around them is so intense, detailing what happened is more precise and better serves audiences.
“Therefore, the AP is not using the terms for specific actions or groups, other than in direct quotations or when attributed to authorities or others,” the AP continued. “Instead, we describe specific atrocities, massacres, bombings, assassinations and other such actions.”
Okay. So, how should reporters describe Hamas? Not as terrorists (AP’s emphasis):
militant, militants
AP uses this term to describe Hamas, in keeping with the Webster’s New World College Dictionary definition: ready and willing to fight; especially, vigorous or aggressive in supporting or promoting a cause; and Merriam-Webster: aggressively active (as in a cause).
Terms such as Hamas fighters, attackers or combatants are also acceptable depending on the context.
Do not use the term Hamas soldiers or Hamas resistance, other than in direct quotations.
The Israeli army has soldiers. It also can be called the Israeli military. Use its official name, Israel Defense Forces, and the acronym IDF only in direct quotations.
Under the Hamas section, the AP admitted: “The U.S. State Department designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1997. The European Union and other Western countries also consider it a terrorist organization.”
But don’t you dare call them terrorists and a terrorist organization! Holy moly.
The reporters also cannot capitalize the word war. It has to be the “Israel-Hamas war.” Why?
“Lowercase the word war,” the AP explained. “AP capitalizes that word only as part of a formal name, which as of now does not exist.”
Are. You. Kidding. Me. Israel *literally* declared war on Hamas. It is *literally* a war.
The Washington Free Beacon reminded everyone that the AP once shared an office building with Hamas for 15 years.
The AP slammed the Israeli military for destroying the building, including the offices, in 2021: “We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.”
The military targeted terrorists, weapons, and an office for Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization.
But the AP knew the building had Hamas and terrorists. In 2014, Matt Friedman, a former AP reporter, detailed in The Atlantic:
When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)
I’m glad I don’t have to use the AP stylebook. MLA is far superior, but even that has been taken over by leftists.
The AP changed language after someone (we still don’t know who) Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
The AP changed definitions and language to cater to the left:
“Phrasing like pregnant people or people who seek an abortion seeks to include people who have those experiences, but do not identify as women, such as some transgender men and some nonbinary people,” read the new AP guidance.
Saying pregnant “women” is now offensive. The rules of grammar and language must conform to any self-proclaimed marginalized group that says it’s offended. Truth and accuracy are secondary concerns.
AP followed up last week with a more extensive “Topical Guide,” on transgenderism and other issues. It suggests using “unbiased language” and to “avoid false balance [by] giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views.”
It then proceeded to elucidate its commitment to carrying water for the transgender advocacy movement and ensure that everyone using the AP Stylebook does, too.
“A person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate,” the guide says, with no evidence or explanation.
“Experts say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting of only men and women, that can vary among societies and can change over time,” AP continues.
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Comments
The reporters also cannot capitalize the word war. It has to be the “Israel-Hamas war.” Why?
“Lowercase the word war,” the AP explained. “AP capitalizes that word only as part of a formal name, which as of now does not exist.”
On this I agree. Hamas is not a nation and does not have the protections of the Geneva convention.
That’s not relevant. The Geneva Convention plays no part in the definition of “war”. Nor is it necessary for participants in a war to be nations or states.
Naw, Im pretty sure Israel has signed up to add Hamas to the geneva conventions and Im also sure Barry, peace be upon him, also agreed that the geneva convention covered groups not traditionally already covered under the convention.
AP-Hamas is going to make itself a fair target in this WAR.
How do they describe decapitated babies?
The enemy?
Little players on other team?
They don’t strike me as terrorists unless it’s a repeatable thing, like bus explosions. Call them what they are, a**holes.
And you would be clearly wrong
These attacks are repeatable. They were themselves repeats, on a larger scale, of multiple previous attacks over the past century.
You have to understand that to the Associated Press, and almost all other Western media; the only terrorists in their view are those who support the Constitution of the United States and the history behind it, support the sovereignty of the United States, or the people of the United States and laws made with their own consent. They are being true to their own loyalties.
Subotai Bahadur
Peabody: So you wouldn’t call raping women, killing old ladies, burning people alive, decapitating babies terrorism?
Associated Press: Oh no, no. It would have to be much worse than than that.
Peabody: Could you give me an expample of something worse.
Associated Press: Well, we would definitely consider a ground invasion of Gaza by IDF to be terrorism.
Or yelling at a school-board Karen.
Or putting your feet on Pelosi’s desk.
Putting your feet on Pelosi’s desk will get you a prison sentence.
Peabody: Could you give me an expample of something worse.
Associated Press: Mis-gendering someone and protesting a stolen election post 2020.
Well, that is way up there for sure.
The Associated Press is the flagship of the Duranty-Streicher Media.
Note they have no compunction against calling you and me terrorists.
The stylebook relieves Hamas Arab-stringers and their western, Hamas friendly counterparts, in London and NY of two things –
charges of applying “neutral” language when the word “terrorist” is the proper, and fitting, description of actual terroristic endeavor.
That the majority of reporters believe Hamas – and Palestinians general – are heroic freedom fighters warring upon Jews and Jewish occupation of the Levant.
Responsibility is sloughed off to unnamed managers located somewhere in Newspaper Land.
This is why we must reject attempts by lefty propagandists to alter definitions to help spread their lies.
So Israel is not at war, what should we call it then?
a. a police action
b. a limited engagement
c. a response of some kind
d. damned if I know
Who determines when Israel has declared war?
a. Associated Press
b. bloggers on the internet
c. White House
d. Israel
A provocation.
Israel gets to decide when they are at War. Further they get to decide the RoE for engagements with the terrorist group Hamas and their supporters in Gaza. Terrorists are unlawful combatants who reject the reciprocal responsibilities of the rules of war which in turn eliminates their claims for protection under them.
IMO one of the greatest mistakes made by the West was to ever offer any protections to terrorists. They should be hunted down and utterly destroyed as enemies of the human race, just as Pirates eventually were.
We call it justified.
Nobody claims Israel is not at war, or that what’s going on is not a war.
The word in question is “formal”. AP says that what’s going on is not a “formal” war:
“Lowercase the word war,” the AP explained. “AP capitalizes that word only as part of a formal name, which as of now does not exist.”
No, AP is not saying that. It’s saying the war has no formal name. Unless you want to call it the Iron Swords War, that is true.
So Israel is not fighting a “formal” war, what should we call it then?
a. Iron Swords War
b. War on Terror
c. War in the Mid-East
d. Only Milhouse Knows For Sure
Who determines what the formal name is?
a. Milhouse
b. Associated Press
c. The US patent Office
d. Israel
Peabody, what is wrong with you? NOBODY AT ALL is claiming that Israel is not at war, or that it’s not a “formal” war, whatever that might mean. NOBODY has used the term “formal war”. You are simply imagining it. AP is saying, and I am saying, that this war has no formal English name. If you think it has one, why don’t you tell us what it is, and point to some examples of its usage as evidence.
Wars rarely do have formal names while they’re being fought. Can you think of a few that did? They generally get named in retrospect. And usually nobody “determines” their names; they just emerge. Can you think of any war in history that was formally named by one “official” entity?
Bah. It’s Associated Press. Many years ago I called the San Antonio office of AP to point out incorrect terminology that they used in a story about firearms. To this day, I remember the response: “Most readers wouldn’t know the difference anyway.” In that instant, AP lost all credibility. I have seen nothing in the intervening twenty-five or so years to change my opinion.
AP is right about this. Of course it’s literally a war. That’s why they say to refer to it that way. “The Israel-Hamas war“. But they only capitalize “war” as part of a formal name, and this war does not yet have one. At least, not in English. Looking at Wikipedia, I find that the English article is titled “2023 Israel–Hamas war”. Note the lower case “w”. Within the article there’s a reference to the IDF’s “Operation Iron Swords”. The Hebrew article, though, is titled מלחמת חרבות ברזל, “The Iron Swords War”. That’s because in Hebrew it has a formal name. That name is unlikely ever to migrate into English, though. (The infobox title has a footnote saying that within the IDF it’s also referred to as “Operation Iron Swords”.)