Peter Beinart, a
writer and editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, a progressive Jewish magazine, told me the battles about stories are often fought in these details. “There’s a whole carefully curated language around this conflict, where terms are often deployed in order to not provoke controversy, or backlash,” he told me. Beinart said he believes this isn’t motivated by political slant, but rather conditioning. “One of the things that I hope that will start to happen is that people will interrogate that language and ask, ‘Maybe this is the politically safe language, but is it actually true?’ ”
Beinart has already noticed changes in how reporters and outlets choose their words in recent months. He pointed to the increasing use of “racist” instead of phrases like “racially tinged.” He expects more of the press is close to bringing that bluntness when we speak about Israel. “Even putting aside what happens in the West Bank or Gaza, where Palestinians aren’t citizens at all and the state dominates their lives, it is very frightening that words like ‘ethnonationalism’ or ‘Jewish supremacy’ or ‘Jewish domination’ would be unsafe words for most mainstream newspapers to use. Even though, in a certain sense, they really shouldn’t be controversial.”
Beinart also said he expects the language we use about organizations like Hamas to evolve over time as well. “People are so afraid of legitimizing or justifying Hamas. And I understand why they wouldn’t—a friend of mine was killed in a Hamas bus bombing. I have a personal experience with Hamas’ violence,” he told me. Still, he said he believes some language about Hamas obscures context. “One of the things that happens is we hear about a Hamas official being killed, but Hamas is running the equivalent of a Post Office. It’s got a military wing in its organization, but it’s also running a civil society. So those distinctions are often lost.”
I don't think it's ever been in the news for the right reasons