Former Israeli ambassador to U.S. fumes at western media over 'militant' label for Hamas

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.

The raid triggered a major flare-up in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has led not only to artillery exchanges on the Gaza border, but to Israeli operations against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah and cross-border fire into Syria. As Israeli forces reclaim territory in the nation's south, reports have emerged of civilian dead and numerous atrocities committed by Hamas.

Speaking on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show, Oren noted those developments and insisted that Hamas's tactics fall squarely under the category of "terrorism" and that the use of the term "militant" to describe its personnel conveyed an undue legitimacy.

"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."

"[T]he enemy we face in Hamas is the same enemy that America faces in ISIS and Al Qaeda. It is a radical, medieval, vicious, brutal, barbaric, jihadist group," Oren said. "[I]t's not a clash of civilizations... it's a clash between a civilization and a different universe, a very dark and evil universe, and you have to believe in evil."

He further insisted that use of the term "militant" to describe Hamas constituted anti-Semitism and lamented the perceived influence that the terror group has on western journalists.

"I know people in mainstream media outlets in the United States that have received the memo even today, reiterating the need to call these awful, barbaric terrorists 'militants,' militants!" he fumed. "And they can say that they commit acts of terror, but you can't call them terrorists. That's how absurd this is."

He further opined that comparably horrendous acts committed against non-Jewish groups would receive the label of terrorism.

"There's only one reason ... because their victims are Jews, because if they did the same thing to the Americans, they do the same thing to Ukrainians, those perpetrators would be called terrorists," Oren added. "It's only because it's Jewish and on a certain level, I gotta tell you, the use of the word militant is anti-Semitic."

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.