Why Are Ukrainian Officials & Bashar Assad Allowed to Call Enemies "Terrorists" but the Western Press Won't Use the Word?

Forty years ago in the 1970s, the Irish Republican Army Provisional faction was performing acts of terrorism and sometimes mass murder in Northern Ireland. And the BBC called them "terrorists." In the same years, the Fatah --meaning conquest of a city in Arabic-- was acting as a mass murderous terrorist group. Neither Fatah nor its partners in mass murder terrorism against Israelis and Jews, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,  the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine plus half a dozen smaller murder factions, was called "terrorist" by the BBC. Who can reckon why this discrepancy? Why were IRA Provos called "terrorists" but not Fatah or the PFLP or the PDFLP?

Maybe the BBC thought that British blood was redder than Jewish-Israeli blood. I can only speculate.

In recent years it is not only the BBC that refuses to call terrorists what they are. Now it is a well-established widespread practice in Western press and media outlets that terrorists are called "militants." In earlier years, a militant was a guy who came out to walk the picket line during a strike, a guy who came to the picket line every day, even in bad weather when most people would be more comfortable at home. A militant for a revolutionary faction was somebody who would pick up a thousand leaflets printed by his faction and stand on a street corner all day giving them out. But nobody in those far off days  would call somebody who planted a bomb in a school playground a "militant."

But the word "terrorist" is still  used these days. Bashar Assad called his domestic enemies "terrorists" in 2011 even before allies and cothinkers of al-Qa`ida had joined the struggle against Assad, or what is now a struggle  to determine the future of Syria.
When Assad started calling the rebels against him "terrorists" before it was  true, back in 2011, he was wrong. But he knew very well what and who were terrorists. He himself and his father before him had funded and trained Arab terrorists attacking Israel. The Assad regime in Syria had funded and trained several of the smaller PLO factions since the 1960s, and Hamas & Hizbullah, since the 1980s. After the  US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Assad regime armed and trained terrorists who operated in Iraq against the foreign occupation troops, including Americans of course. These Syrian-trained terrorists especially took to using bombs to slaughter the Shiite population in Iraq. Surely the Assad regime knew that these were terrorists. By the way, today Assad is allied with Shiites warriors against Sunni Muslim rebels against him.

Now we know that Assad's regime is greatly aided by the Russian government. The Russian govt also supports rebels and insurgents in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. These rebels and insurgents who favor Russian rule over their home areas in Eastern Ukraine, in the Don Basin, and so on, are rough and abusive and often thuggish. But they are hardly terrorists in the sense of Hamas or Hizbullah or al-Qa`ida. Yet officials of the Ukrainian government, Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko and so on, call these rebels/insurgents "terrorists." This is one of the things that keeps the new Ukrainian govt from having any credibility,

Now the new Ukrainian govt is supported by Western powers including the EU & USA. So Russia's ally in Syria, Assad, called his opponents "terrorists"  even when the rebels fighting him were not terrorists.
Today, Ukrainian officials supported by the EU & USA call the rebels that Russia supports "terrorists" when they are not.

Meanwhile, Western news outlets like BBC, France24, the New York Times and so many others, call the real terrorists mere "militants."

Hence the word terrorist has become an ill-treated orphan. Can't somebody sort out the meanings and  usages of the words "terrorist" & "militant"? Where is Orwell when we need him?

Arab Witness to the 1929 Hebron Massacre Prays for More Massacres of Jews

More news on those peace-and-freedom-loving Palestinian Arabs. MEMRI shows that some Arabs take pride till this day in past acts of mass murder perpetrated against peaceful Jews.
Hamas TV interviewed an Arab woman from Hebron who lived at the time of the Hebron massacre in 1929, which took place 19 years before the rise of the State of Israel, 19 years before there were any Arab refugees from Israel to lament and complain about. It was thoughtful of Mrs Jaber to remind us of that massacre before the pretexts supplied today for massacres existed. In 1929, there were no Arab refugees and no State of Israel. Yet there was a massacre. In any case, Mrs Jaber liked that early, pre-state episode of mass murder so much that she would like to see it repeated, but on a much larger scale.
MEMRI also has a video of this interview for those who don't want to believe that that's how many Arabs think:

92-Year-Old Palestinian Woman in a Right-of-Return Demonstration On Hamas TV: Palestinians Should Massacre the Jews Like We Massacred Them in Hebron

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sara Jaber, a 92-year-old Palestinian who participated in a Right of Return demonstration on the Jordanian-Israeli border. The interview was aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV on May 13, 2011.

Interviewer: "Please tell us who you are."

Sara Jaber: "I am from Hebron. The Jaber family."

Interviewer: "What is your name?"

Sara Jaber: "Sara Muhammad 'Awwadh Jaber."

Interviewer: "How old are you?"

Sara Jaber: "I am 92."

Interviewer: "So you remember May 15, 1948, the day of the Nakba."

Sara Jaber: "Why wouldn't I remember? May Allah support us. I hope we forget those days. Allah willing, you will bury [Israel], and massacre the Jews with your own hands. Allah willing, you will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron."

Interviewer: "What does this day mean to you? You have lived 63 years since the Nakba. You have experienced the entire Nakba..."

Sara Jaber: "92 years. That's 92. I lived through the British era, and I lived through the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them, and brought back some stuff..."

Interviewer: "Thank you very much. [interview here]

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This interview is helpful in that an Arab woman admits that the Hebron massacre took place. Jews don't have to spend energy proving that it happened to the ever so righteous "leftists" and other doubters of whatever a Jew says, although are eager to believe any lie out of an Arab's mouth. That ilk finds the truth of the Hebron massacre to be an inconvenient truth. But Mrs Jaber admits the massacre frankly, brutally frankly. Sometimes the Arabs can be brutally frank, especially if they think that they are winning. They lie when they think that they are in a weaker positions.
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Video of the interview here.
This video was shown on the Glenn Beck show on Foxnews TV on 5-19-2011.
Info about the massacre on the website of the Hebron Jewish community [here]. Includes an account of the massacre by Pierre van Paassen who came to Hebron shortly after the slaughter.