IDF materials showing alleged Hamas tunnel infrastructure located beneath schools in the Gaza Strip. Photo: IDF

Napoleon Bonaparte, himself a giant of history, famously remarked that “history is a set of lies agreed upon.” Centuries later, the American Historical Association is on the precipice of taking the French revolutionary’s quip literally.

Boasting over 10,000 historians in its ranks, the American Historical Association “promotes the critical role of historical thinking in public life,” according to its website. However, recent events suggest members lack historical thinking even within the American Historical Association’s own activities.

On Sunday, more than 400 members of the academic association voted to advance a resolution condemning Israel for the imaginary crime of “scholasticide.” The resolution alleges that Israel is intentionally destroying the education system in the Gaza Strip.

Contrary to the American Historical Association’s mission, the resolution – advanced by radical pseudointellectuals – eschews “historical thinking in public life.” Instead, it employs partisan talking points devoid of evidence and context. In other words, to adopt the resolution isn’t to advance historical thinking; it’s to agree to a set of lies.

The resolution lists a few bases for its allegation, such as the destruction of schools and universities in Gaza during the war. Yet nowhere does the resolution contend with the critical questions of intent and legal and moral responsibility. It assumes criminality and malice on the part of the Jewish State without evidence.

But intent and responsibility matter. No one denies that schools have been destroyed during the war launched by Hamas. At issue is why they’ve been destroyed.

The resolution omits any context and history that address those questions. These omissions are especially notable given that no one at the American Historical Association is privy to the targeting process and decision-making inside the Israel Defense Forces command structure.

In Gaza, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations have systematically exploited schools and other civilian infrastructure for military purposes. This isn’t just Israeli propaganda – the IDF has published countless videos and images of terrorists exploiting civilian infrastructure. Just a few days ago, drone footage shared by the IDF showed numerous weapons hidden inside yet another school in Jabaliya. The United Nations has admitted, on many occasions, the existence of terror tunnels and weapons on the premises of UNRWA schools. Palestinian officials have published documentary evidence of it, and Hamas has even filmed itself using such facilities. Substantial evidence shows that Gazan schoolteachers and officials were involved in terrorist organizations and even participated in the atrocities of October 7, 2023.

This information has obvious relevance, as it explains why schools are being hit during an ongoing armed conflict.

Under international law, parties to a conflict are “to the maximum extent feasible,” supposed to “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas” and take “other necessary precautions to protect the civilian population, individual civilians, and civilian objects under their control against the danger resulting from military operations.” Hamas has brazenly violated these legal obligations.

On Israel’s part, it is true that schools are normally civilian objects that are given protection under the law of armed conflict. However, schools lose their protection as civilian objects when they are used to make an effective contribution to military action, at which point they become lawful military objectives. Israel is not obligated to refrain from striking terrorists or arms depots merely because they were cynically located in a civilian area. 

As explained by the US Department of Defense Law of War Manual (see section 5.12.3.4), “[t]he party that employs human shields in an attempt to shield military objectives from attack assumes responsibility” for injury to civilians, though any strike must still abide by other legal rules such as proportionality.

This is common sense. To erase Hamas’ responsibility for its systematic embedding of military infrastructure in civilian areas — unprecedented in both extent and sophistication — is to incentivize further human shielding and result in greater human suffering for both Israeli and Gazan civilians.

It is thus telling that the same people charging Israel with the imaginary crime of “scholasticide” are silent as to Hamas’ commission of the real crime of human shielding. Their failure to acknowledge how the war began — with the invasion and commission of unspeakable atrocities by Palestinian terrorists against Israeli civilians — is further telling. It is well documented that Hamas’ plans for October 7 explicitly included the targeting of elementary schools and youth centers in Israeli communities in order to “kill as many people as possible.” The contrasting silence from the American Historical Association resolution’s authors regarding Hamas’ plans to turn schools into slaughterhouses rings loud.

With this little bit of historical context and thinking, the game that members of the American Historical Association are playing becomes clear. This has nothing to do with the organization’s mission or concern for humanity. It’s about unacademic activists attempting to get historians to agree to a set of lies. Should the association wish to maintain its credibility and the integrity of the field of history, the choice is clear. It must reject this depraved resolution.

David M. Litman is a Senior Research Analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).

The post The American Historical Association’s Set of Anti-Israel Lies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Hamas terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah in January 2017. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90.

There’s a well-known quote that goes: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Evidently, many media outlets subscribe to this relativistic worldview. Yet this line is from a novel — a work of fiction — and is of no relevance to the media’s responsibility to relay information to news consumers in an objective manner.

By incessantly referring to Hamas as a militant group (See here, here, here, here, and here) the world’s premiere outlets are effectively burying the character, methods of operation, and true goals of the Gaza-based movement that has been officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and dozens of other countries around the world.

BBC’s and NYT’s “Terrorist” Blindside

To the casual reader, the issue of accurately describing Hamas could be perceived as a mere matter of semantics. But it became a hot-button topic following the October 7 attack by the terrorist group against Israel. So much so that Israeli President Isaac Herzog blasted the BBC – which refuses to term Hamas as terrorist even though the UK proscribes the group’s military wings as terror organizations.

In his meeting with then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Herzog told the UK premier: “We feel that the way the BBC characterizes Hamas is a distortion of the facts. We are dealing with one of the worst terror organizations in the world…there has to be an outcry so that there will be a correction, and Hamas will be defined as a terror organization.”

The reluctance to call a spade a spade isn’t confined to the British press. The New York Times is another serial offender. A review by HonestReporting of a recent interview with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken found that the term Israel appeared 104 times in the transcripts, while Hamas made 34 appearances. The term terror (or terrorism or terrorist) shows up a grand total of zero times.

Indeed, the only time you’re likely to see the terms terror or terrorism in connection to Hamas is in quotation marks, since they’re almost invariably taken from an Israeli source — providing a way for journalists to distance themselves from supposedly biased Israeli officials.

“Terrorist” Vs. “Militant”: A Distinction With Major Differences

There is undoubtedly some overlap between militants and terrorists. For example, they both engage in violence in order to achieve their goals. But there are important distinctions. The motives and actions of a designated terrorist organization are unique.

While there is no international consensus on the definition of terrorism, it’s broadly understood to be the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. Every government has its own interpretation of terrorism. According to the United States State Department:

For the purpose of the Order, “terrorism” is defined to be an activity that (1) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (2) appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

By describing Hamas as a mere militant group, media outlets are downplaying the very acts that made the October 7 attack so horrific: The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; the use of civilians as human shields; and the taking of non-combatants as hostages. It’s also worth noting that these crimes against humanity were all “…central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry or as isolated acts.”

Not calling out Hamas for the terrorist organization it is has had far-reaching consequences beyond a battle over terminology.

Because Hamas is widely depicted as a militant group, agenda-driven media personalities like Mehdi Hasan have found a way to perpetuate false analogies between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s conflict with the Gaza-based terrorist organization.

Though the disparity between the two situations could not be more striking, Hamas gains support and legitimacy whenever it’s compared to a UN-member state that was invaded.

The whitewashing of Hamas can also be discerned in the way many prominent publications describe the group’s most powerful members. After Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination, The Wall Street Journal called him a “leading advocate for a ceasefire,” while Reuters and The Guardian labeled him a “moderate.”

In fact, Haniyeh was designated a “global terrorist” by the US, and responsible for heinous acts against civilians.

And when Hamas’ true terrorist nature is covered up, burying their true aims becomes that much easier. The Wall Street Journal stated in October 2023 that the internationally-recognized terror organization is “dedicated to the creation of an independent Palestinian state” and that it has “indicated it is willing to accept a two-state solution….” The truth is, the group is openly committed to the destruction of Israel. This has been expressed in Hamas’ 1988 founding charter, as well as numerous statements by Hamas leaders such as Ismail Haniyeh and Saleh Al-Arouri.

Media Not Adjusting to New Realities After October 7

While media outlets don’t want to be accused of taking sides in the Israel-Hamas war, governments have. Switzerland in December 2024 officially declared that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Argentina became the first state in Latin America to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization, in a move announced by President Javier Milei in July 2024.

These and other governments adjusted their policies regarding Hamas in response to the horrors perpetrated by the terrorist outfit on October 7, 2023. There is a growing recognition that the threat Hamas represents is global, and must not be ignored any longer.

Yet far too many news organizations continue to treat Hamas with kid gloves. By not describing Hamas as a designated terrorist group, news publications have effectively normalized it.

Gidon Ben-Zvi, former Jerusalem Correspondent for The Algemeiner, is an accomplished writer who left Hollywood for Jerusalem in 2009. He and his wife are raising their four children to speak fluent English – with an Israeli accent. Ben-Zvi’s work has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Algemeiner, American Thinker, The Jewish Journal, Israel Hayom, and United with Israel. Ben-Zvi blogs at Jerusalem State of Mind (jsmstateofmind.com). The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post Hamas Is Not ‘Militant’: The Media’s ‘Terrorist’ Cover-Up first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS

US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) announced on Wednesday that he intends to vote in favor of imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

In statements posted on X/Twitter, Torres lambasted the ICC over its “weaponization of international law,” arguing that the Hague-based court has waged an ideological propaganda campaign against Israel and unfairly maligned Israeli leaders for “daring to defend” their country against terrorist groups.

“The ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants against the leadership of Israel represents the weaponization of international law at its most egregious,” Torres said. “The ICC has set a precedent for criminalizing self-defense: any country daring to defend itself against an enemy that exploits civilians as human shields will face persecution posing as prosecution.”

Torres accused the ICC of brushing aside Israel’s motives for prosecuting its war against the Hamas terrorist group. He also castigated the ICC as a “kangaroo court,” criticizing it for ignoring Hamas’s intentional use of the Palestinian people as human shields to maximize civilian casualties — a tactic employed by the terrorist group to tarnish Israel’s international reputation. 

“The ICC ignores the cause and context of the war. Israel did not initiate the war. The war was imposed upon Israel by the unbridged barbarism of Hamas on Oct. 7 [of 2023],” Torres said. “Not only did Hamas wage war on Israel, causing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, it carefully constructed a battlefield designed to maximize the loss of civilian life. None of that context seems to matter to the kangaroo court of the ICC, which cannot let facts get in the way of its ideological crusade against the Jewish State. The ICC should be sanctioned not for enforcing the law but for distorting it beyond recognition.”

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the war-torn enclave throughout the war.

US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, initially made his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.

Following the official issuing of arrest warrants in November, a slew of US lawmakers vowed to seek retribution against the ICC after President-elect Donald Trump takes office later this month. 

“These allegations have been refuted by the US government,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), Trump’s pick to serve as White Hous national security adviser in the incoming administration, wrote on X. “Israel has lawfully defended its people & borders from genocidal terrorists. You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.”

Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has also threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the ICC if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials.

Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.

Another challenge for Israel has been Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

The post Ritchie Torres Announces Intent to Vote for Sanctions Against ICC, Citing Anti-Israel ‘Ideological Crusade’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.