Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
We regularly point out that the British and other governments have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation, but that’s their business. We also run interviews with guests and quote contributors who describe Hamas as terrorists.
The key point is that we don’t say it in our voice. Our business is to present our audiences with the facts, and let them make up their own minds.
As it happens, of course, many of the people who’ve attacked us for not using the word terrorist have seen our pictures, heard our audio or read our stories, and made up their minds on the basis of our reporting, so it’s not as though we’re hiding the truth in any way - far from it.
Any reasonable person would be appalled by the kind of thing we’ve seen. It’s perfectly reasonable to call the incidents that have occurred “atrocities”, because that’s exactly what they are.
No-one can possibly defend the murder of civilians, especially children and even babies - nor attacks on innocent, peace-loving people who are attending a music festival.
No, it’s not political. It has a political element, but so does basically everything. Which would render the word “terrorism” useless.
The main goal of annexation isn’t politics. It’s theft. The Palestinians have a thing the Israelis want (land) and the Israelis are stealing it. That’s conquest, and genocide, not terrorism
Maybe we should reserve the term genocide for the act of trying to kill/destroy a population. Israel is doing horrible things to bully the Palestinians to leave, but they’re certainly not trying to exterminate them
Bold take that a conquest between two states is not political.
So all war, ever, including defensive war, is terrorism? Not super useful.
There are multiple definitions of political, and you’re using the least useful one.
All war is political, dont shift the goalposts. Non state entities (settlers in this case) doing acts of war on specific ethnic populations is political terror.