[Salon] Haaretz in government crosshairs after publisher calls terrorists 'freedom fighters'

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

FM: John Whitbeck

Transmitted below is a link to a TIMES OF ISRAEL report on the fierce Israeli government response to HAARETZ publisher Amos Shocken's courageously telling it like it is at a conference on Sunday in London, notably his referring to "Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/haaretz-in-government-crosshairs-after-publisher-calls-terrorists-freedom-fighters/

By way of contrast, in an address on Tuesday to the Moroccan parliament, French President Emmanuel Macron branded Palestinians resisting the illegal Israeli occupation of their country as "terrorists" and "barbaric" while defending Israel's "right to self-defense" against them, bringing understandably outraged protestors into the steets of Moroccan cities (https://www.palestinechronicle.com/resistance-is-not-terrorism-macron-slammed-for-criticizing-hamas-in-morocco).

Evidently, Macron has forgotten (or never noticed) the violent reaction to then-French prime minister Lionel Jospin's branding as "terrorist acts" attacks by Hezbollah fighters against Israeli forces then illegally occupying Lebanon, an understandable reaction which I cited in my 2002 essay on the use and abuse of the quintessentially subjective, essentially meaningless but ever-so-useful-to-occupiers-and-oppressors word "terrorism" (https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/terrorism-this-insidious-word).

As I wrote then: "Mr. Jospin would never have dreamed of characterizing as 'terrorist acts' attacks by French resistance fighters against German occupation forces in France during the Second World War. Yet, objectively, there is no distinction between the two resistance struggles. The only distinction is who is resisting whom -- a distinction blindingly clear to an Arab or Muslim audience."

With respect to the Palestinian resistance struggle over the past 57 years and still today, this reality should be blindingly clear not only to Arabs and Muslims but to all decent, non-racist people on our planet.