My latest: a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist

Terrorist.

And, here we go again.

The definition of “terrorist” is someone who is prepared to use violence to achieve some political objective. It’s not complicated.

At the CBC, however – and other news organizations, to be fair – the word “terrorist” is apparently verboten. CBC, and other media organizations, this week decreed that the word “militant” should be used to describe Hamas and their ilk. Not terrorist.

In a week where we are bearing witness to unspeakable horrors – in a week where we were provided with proof that Hamas actually killed babies last Saturday – it all seems insane, offensive, absurd. People in the Middle East are literally burying their dead and trying to stay alive, and over here we are debating semantics.

But we do that a lot, don’t we? Far from the front lines, some of us in the West expend a lot of energy on word games. Some of us think it’s meaningful.

It isn’t. It’s stupid. It’s a waste of time.

And, what happened is indisputably terrorism.

But if you think that the subhumans who murdered babies care what we call them, you are living in a fantasy world. If you think that innocent Israelis (and innocent Palestinians) – cowering in bombshelters, listening to death thud all around them – are preoccupied with semantics this week, you’re dreaming.

But still,  some of us over here still do it. Perhaps it makes us feel we are making a meaningful contribution.

When I started off in journalism, as a teenager, I would get to interview rock stars. I didn’t make any money doing it, but it was fun.

I did it for years: I interviewed everyone from Meat Loaf to Ted Nugent to the Sex Pistols. Every so often, one of them would complain to me about being pigeonholed in one genre or another.

Backstage one night in Vancouver with The Clash, I raised the subject with the legendary punk band’s lead singer, Joe Strummer. Stummer smiled and stuck an index finger in my chest.

“Punk rock, rock ‘n’ roll, it doesn’t matter what you call it,” he said. “The kid who is hearing the song, hearing the words, decides. The kid knows what to call it.”

The same goes for the families of the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered in cold blood one week ago. They know; they decide.

It was terrorism. It was mass murder. It was genocide. It was the darkest hatred. It was evil made flesh.

So, my advice is this: don’t get upset by what CBC calls it. Don’t waste time complaining to them.

Because, when all is said and done, when someone refuses to call terrorism what it is, which is terrorism? When they ignore the literal definition of “terrorist?”

It defines them, too.