Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren on Tuesday excoriated western media for labelling members of the Gaza-based Hamas as “militants” rather than “terrorists” in the wake of a brutal raid by the group into Israeli territory that inflicted civilian considerable civilian casualties and prompted the Israel Defense Forces to strike the Gaza Strip in retaliation. …

“These are people who behead babies, repeatedly rape young women and strip them and marched them naked through the streets of Gaza so they can be spat upon and beaten, they take entire families out and shoot them,” he continued. “And these people are not, as many of the media outlets in your country prefer to call them, ‘militants.’ They’re not fighters. They are terrorists. This is the very definition of terrorists. And that’s the message that Israel is at the forefront of the defense of our civilization against this evil. And there can be no deeper message I could give. Stop calling them militants please.”

[It’s long past time we stopped using euphemisms for terrorists. Governments and media tried to soften it up in hopes that Hamas and other such groups would develop a pragmatic agenda. How’s that working out? The only thing it’s softened up is Western thinking. — Ed]