Hamas has been a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997, when the list was first developed. On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attackers invaded Israel, deliberately murdered civilians and kidnapped over 250 people.

It was designated terrorists committing terrorism.

Yet “terrorist” became a troublesome word for mainstream media and alt-left politicians.

The Associated Press advises journalists to describe specific acts and generally attribute the terms terrorism and terrorist to people or organizations, rather than independently apply them. Amnesty International has gone further, explaining that it generally avoids the terms because they lack an agreed legal definition and carry strong political and emotional connotations.

That restraint evaporates around “genocide.”

Genocide is the more demanding accusation. Death, destruction and even war crimes do not establish it. The Genocide Convention requires the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group as such. Israel emphatically denies that intent, maintaining that it went to war to defeat Hamas – the terrorists which had committed mass terrorism – and recover its hostages, not destroy Palestinian Arabs.

Amnesty nevertheless declares that Israel is committing genocide. The same organization that will not call Hamas a terrorist organization after its deliberate slaughter and kidnapping of civilians has no hesitation resolving the vastly more difficult question of Israeli intent.

Progressive politicians follow the same linguistic path. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was accusing Israel of genocide within weeks of October 7 and later called Benjamin Netanyahu a “genocidal maniac.” Zohran Mamdani repeatedly describes the October 7 massacre as a “horrific war crime” rather than a terrorist act, while calling Israel’s war “genocide” and Netanyahu the “architect of a horrific genocide.”

The burden of proof has been turned upside down.

Calling October 7 terrorism requires looking simply at what Hamas did: a designated terrorist organization deliberately murdered and kidnapped civilians for political and ideological purposes. It is plainly terrorism.

Calling Israel’s war genocide requires establishing why Israel fought it: that its actual intent was to destroy Palestinian Arabs as a people rather than defeat Hamas in a defensive war.

Yet the first conclusion is treated as dangerously judgmental while the second is repeated as established fact.

Mehdi Hasan offered an almost grotesque demonstration this week while attacking a New York Times essay by Gazan Palestinian Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib urging Palestinians to resist Hamas. Hasan called people sharing the essay “pro-genocide people,” Israel “the genocidaire,” the essay “a pro genocide piece” and the war “this current genocide.”

Hasan suffers a genocide stutter.

He cannot bring himself to say clearly and unambiguously that Hamas is a terrorist group and committed a heinous terrorist act, but cannot get the word “genocide” out of his mouth as he tries to hypnotize viewers into believing the unbelievable about Israel.

And the accusation does not remain attached to Israel’s government. Once genocide becomes the premise, anyone defending Israel can become pro-genocide. Even a Palestinian Arab arguing that his own people must resist Hamas can produce a pro-genocide piece for the obsessive compulsive stutterer.

That is how a defamatory vocabulary spreads.

Genocide is among the gravest accusations that can be made against a people or state. Repeating it as established fact without establishing the specific intent the crime requires does more than distort a war. It tells millions of people that Israel is deliberately destroying Palestinian Arabs and that those who defend Israel are defending that destruction.

That is an incendiary allegation in a world where Jews and Israelis are already threatened and attacked over Gaza.

Meanwhile, terrorist is handled delicately when describing the organization that deliberately slaughtered civilians on October 7 in the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

The asymmetry is morally grotesque. Hasan, Tlaib, Mamdani are trafficking in the asymmetry of whataboutery as a heinous veneer to protect antisemitic terrorists, plain and simple.