The War of Words

Terrorism, pogrom, genocide: Naming reality — or manipulating it?

French columnist Sophia Aram recently devoted a column in Le Point (September 3, 2026) to what she called a form of “lexical capitulation”: the strange contemporary tendency to shy away from certain words precisely when they ought to be used.

The use of the word “terrorism” is perhaps the most striking example she cites in support of her argument.

Ahead of the anniversary of 9/11, she noted that CBC/Radio-Canada had reminded its journalists to avoid directly describing the attacks as “terrorist,” on the grounds that such a politically charged term might compromise journalistic neutrality. That same week in France, far-left European lawmaker Rima Hassan sparked controversy after sharing a tribute to Kozo Okamoto, one of the perpetrators of the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, and taking part in a parliamentary roundtable questioning not only France’s offense of glorifying terrorism, but the broader counterterrorism framework — even the very concept of terrorism itself.

And since October 7, parts of the Western activist world have displayed remarkable semantic ingenuity in avoiding certain words whenever they risk making reality too uncomfortable for particular audiences: terrorism becomes “resistance,” a massacre becomes an “operation,” and the deliberate murder of civilians an expression of “anti-colonial struggle.”

Paradoxically, Israel is home to an opposite tendency — an almost self-flagellating impulse to overstate our own failings, turning every excess into a historical symptom, every act of violence into “terror,” every riot into a “pogrom.”

While some stubbornly resist using the word terrorism when Israel is its victim, others deploy it with remarkable ease when it serves to morally criminalize the Israeli Right.

This is how the notion of “Jewish terrorism” gradually took hold in Israel — and almost immediately abroad — to describe violence committed by a small radicalized fringe of young Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Let us begin with what should be beyond dispute.

Such unjustifiable violence exists. It is unacceptable. Burning a Palestinian’s car because he is Palestinian, setting fire to his crops, vandalizing his property or engaging in collective revenge are crimes.

Precisely because these acts are serious, they must be described accurately.

Terrorism is not merely abhorrent violence. It implies a political logic: organization, doctrine, continuity and the intent to produce effects extending beyond the individual act itself.

What we see among a very limited fringe of young Jewish offenders in Judea and Samaria belongs to a different reality: assaults, arson, vandalism and punitive raids, often triggered by a terrorist attack. These acts must be punished firmly. But grouping them under the blanket label of “Jewish terrorism” attributes to them a political coherence and strategy they simply do not possess.

Hamas, by contrast, is not the sum of spontaneous acts of violence. It is a structured organization with a command hierarchy, armed units, financing and political objectives. Its violence is not an outburst. It is a method.

Placing Hamas’s organized terrorism and the criminal violence of marginal Jewish youths in the same category is not an exercise in precision. It manufactures an artificial symmetry.

Those who set fire to a Palestinian car are offenders, and may well be criminals. But presenting them as the ideological twins of Hamas is propaganda, not analysis.

Huwara and the word “pogrom”

The same mechanism was at work following the events in Huwara in February 2023.

That day, after the murder of two Israeli brothers, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, several dozen Israelis entered the Palestinian town. Homes and numerous vehicles were set on fire. The acts were serious, reprehensible and warranted arrests and punishment.

But they were also given a name: pogrom.

Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, then head of the IDF Central Command, himself used the term.

I understand what General Fuchs was trying to express: moral revulsion at an act of collective revenge. I nevertheless dispute the word.

A pogrom is not simply a superlative for an ethnic riot. It refers to a precise historical reality: the collective violence inflicted upon Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, particularly in the Russian Empire — minorities without sovereignty, without the means to defend themselves, abandoned to mobs whom the authorities tolerated, sometimes encouraged, or proved unable to restrain.

When we say pogrom, we summon Kishinev and Odessa: civilians slaughtered, mutilated and raped. Huwara is not Kishinev.

The Palestinians of Huwara are not the Jews of Tsarist Russia. The young Israelis who came to exact revenge are not Cossacks.

And the State of Israel is not a regime that organizes or encourages the persecution of a defenseless minority: perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted.

The word “pogrom” does more than condemn what happened. It imposes a narrative upon it.

The Palestinian becomes the Jew of Kishinev. The Israeli Jew becomes the Cossack.

That is precisely what gives the term its political power: it no longer merely describes; it instantly assigns the moral roles.

Then came “genocide”

And this brings us to the third word.

The gravest of them all: genocide.

I am obviously not suggesting that the use of the terms “Jewish terrorism” or “pogrom” caused the accusation of genocide now leveled against Israel.

But the intellectual mechanism is similar: reaching for the most historically damning word available rather than the one that most accurately describes reality.

Once every form of ideological violence becomes terrorism and a criminal riot becomes a pogrom, it becomes easier still to turn a deadly war into genocide.

Yet genocide is not simply a war that causes a tragic number of deaths. Nor is it synonymous with massacre, massive destruction or even war crimes.

Genocide requires one particular and essential element: the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.

The decisive word is intent.

One can be appalled by Gaza, criticize certain Israeli decisions and demand investigations into possible violations of the laws of war.

None of this, in itself, turns a war into genocide.

Taking the accusation against Israel seriously means precisely refusing to confuse accusation with verdict.

It means examining the facts, military objectives, orders given, operational conduct and, above all, the central question: Is there an intent to destroy the Palestinian population of Gaza as a group?

That is what the word genocide requires us to establish.

Respecting words

We are witnessing a remarkable asymmetry in the use of language.

When Israeli civilians are massacred, some immediately search for the context that might soften the word “terrorism.” We must understand, contextualize, go back to 1948, and invoke occupation, despair or resistance.

But when Israel finds itself in the dock, such semantic caution suddenly disappears.

A few dozen Jewish offenders become “Jewish terrorism.”

A criminal riot becomes a “pogrom.”

And the war against Hamas becomes a “genocide.”

A thousand precautions are demanded before violence directed against Israel may be called “terrorism,” yet far fewer seem necessary before applying to Israel the most damning terms in our political and historical vocabulary.

This is not merely inconsistency. It is a genuine politics of language: minimize words when they condemn Israel’s enemies; maximize them when they condemn Israel.

And that is precisely why words must be respected.

We live in an age of lexical inflation. A questionable policy becomes “fascism.” Discrimination becomes “apartheid.” A riot becomes a “pogrom.” A war becomes “genocide.”

By applying the gravest terms to an ever-expanding range of realities, we cease to describe them and begin to distort them — sometimes to the point of defamation — by imposing a moral and political weight they do not warrant.

An assault can remain abhorrent without amounting to terrorism. A riot can remain shameful without being a pogrom. A war can be horrific without being genocide.

Respecting words means refusing to ask them to serve our side first. It means demanding that they describe reality first.

Terrorism. Pogrom. Genocide.

Their very gravity requires that we not use them lightly.

To defend them against trivialization is to defend the right of words to still mean something.