Using a recent James Bennet article as a case-in-point, Christopher Hitchens critiques the NY Times’ use of the term ‘insurgents’ in Iraq:
I don’t think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown’s downtown as “insurgents.” But it does employ this title every day for the gang headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi… In my ears, “insurgent” is a bit like “rebel” or even “revolutionary.” There’s nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean “rising up.” These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It’s time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.
But when it comes to Israel and its jihadist demons, Hitchens sings a very different tune:
The Palestinian people have a much more justifiable grievance against Israel than even the most alienated Sunni slum-dweller has against the Coalition in Iraq. The Arab citizens of former mandate Palestine live, at best, as second-class citizens in Israel. At worst, they live in vile refugee camps in other states. In the middle, in Jerusalem and Gaza and the West Bank, they experience occupation and colonization and annexation. More than that, they have been told that their very presence is an inconvenience, since the land was awarded by God to the Jews.
See also this interview with Hitchens on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where he blames Israeli policy in the territories for all the region’s woes, and calls Zionism a bad idea from the very start. To the best of our knowledge, Hitchens has never come right out and denied the legitimacy of the State of Israel, but his writings certainly seem to point in that direction.
