By OSNAN SOUZA*

Any denunciation of massacres, rapes, and other atrocities committed by Israeli troops and government is presented as support for terrorism, if not anti-Semitic.

 “Impressive operation”, “Success” and “tactical triumph” are some of the headlines that head Brazilian newspaper articles to refer to Israel's action that left thousands injured (many lost their sight or had limbs amputated) and dozens dead — including children — in Lebanon, on September 17, 2024.

In addition to this air of praise, the event is treated with a touch of curiosity: “What are pagers?”; “How did the pagers explode?”; “How could Israel have created a front company to place explosives in Hezbollah pagers?” — not only militants of this party were killed and injured indiscriminately. The reports also behave as if the explosions were mere incidents: “After pagers, Hezbollah walkie-talkies explode in Beirut and southern Lebanon; 20 die”.

From then on, the headlines and approaches only get worse. True journalistic vandalism. The Israeli action is, at the limit, presented as an attack. The actions of the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations, the Mossad, and other divisions are portrayed as Hollywood adventures. We look in vain in these texts and even in the reflections of columnists and commentators — many of whom present themselves as champions of the fight for democracy and against terrorism — for a denunciation or reprimand against such an act of terrorism. The term does not exist in the language of the Brazilian mainstream press when it comes to characterizing the actions of Israel, the US and their allies. In fact, it was the group targeted by the attack that was portrayed as extremist.

Faced with thousands of mutilated individuals, children and women losing hands, arms and even their vision, ambulances speeding by, scenes of funerals, social panic, deaths and injuries, journalists are concerned about talking about the use and functioning of pagers and walkie-talkies for some decades. For there to be a condemnation of terrorism in the Brazilian press, the only thing that would be condemned would be if the attack was carried out by an armed group from the “Arab World” and if the targets were Israel, the USA or Europe.

There would only be perplexity and alarm if the President of the Republic took a stand, as he did in February of this year, when he rightly compared Israel's actions in Gaza to the actions of the Third Reich. Let us remember that, at that time, the media was already presenting the ongoing massacre against the Palestinian people as “Israel's response” — “Lula compares Israel's response in Gaza to Hitler's actions against Jews”.

Even in the left-wing press, we have difficulty finding the category of terrorism used more openly and frequently to refer to actions such as the one perpetrated in Lebanon this week, despite the fact that the media outlets take a more critical and combative stance. Eduardo Vasco reminds us that when a young Afghan man attacked some people with a knife in the Netherlands in 2018, the action was immediately characterized as terrorism. A year earlier, the attack on six people in Paris was also considered terrorism.

This is a more complex phenomenon. The philosopher Domenico Losurdo pointed out that the language of the empire sought to present all its enemies — who should be physically annihilated — as terrorists. Terrorism is spoken of “only if the attack is organized from below, only if its perpetrators have no power.” This is how the dominant language seeks to argue. This language, Domenico Losurdo emphasizes, was formed over time not only by political discourses and the approach of the mainstream commercial press, but also by historians and other scholars who presented the actions of the United States and its allies in Asia, Africa and Latin America in a romantic way, full of omissions.

Throughout the 11th century, the CIA’s attempts to eliminate rivals of the United States, such as Stalin, Lumumba, Sukarno and, repeatedly, Fidel Castro, were never denounced as terrorist acts, even when “individual terrorism” was understood as an attack on a specific political authority. Likewise, when we talk about “mass terrorism,” only the massacre of September XNUMXth comes into play. History is ignored. Even though we understand “mass terrorism” as the unleashing of violence against the civilian population to achieve specific political and military objectives, the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not presented as such.

The category “terrorism” has been used — and has been used quite vehemently in our day — to justify and legitimize the massacres of thousands of individuals in the Middle East. By using this terminology, an attempt is made to dehumanize not only the armed groups in combat, but also the entire population victimized by the bombings. In fact, the deaths of civilians are presented as something acceptable, if it is a consequence of a “hunt for terrorists.”

Let us not forget Jorge Pontual's words: "Attacking Hamas terrorists is a right that Israel has. If they were in an ambulance, unfortunately that is what Israel had to do: target these enemies of itss."

There is yet another problem at play. It is not clear to point to newspapers as homogeneous bodies. To a certain extent, there is polyphony even within the same outlet. One sees counterpoints, debates, etc. However, when the topics are economics (especially when liberal measures are on the agenda) and geopolitics, the level of heterogeneity in the discussions diminishes alarmingly. In this sense, since the conflict in Gaza returned to the news, following Hamas' military action on Israeli soil, there has been, in fact, a series of criticisms of the “way Israel acts” in the war. There is even talk of “violations” and “war crimes”.

However, the target of criticism, most of the time, is Benjamin Netanyahu's “far-right” position. It is as if this individual were a mutation in time and space in the history of Israel and in the way this state has acted in relation to the Palestinians and other groups in the Middle East.

Let us therefore return to Domenico Losurdo: “the terrorist use of the category terrorism reaches its peak in Palestine”. It is precisely in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the actions of boys who throw stones at tanks are characterized as “hostile terrorist attacks”, which leads the Italian philosopher to ask: “but if the Palestinian boy who protests against the occupation by throwing stones is the ‘terrorist’, should we consider the Israeli soldier who eliminates him as the champion of the fight against terrorism?”

Just in recent days, Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, called “Diplomatic Terrorism” the General Assembly resolution, drafted by the Palestinians and signed by 124 countries, which demands that Israel end “its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months.

Anything that does not converge with Israel’s imperialist interests appears to be terrorism. Any denunciation of massacres, rapes, and other atrocities committed by Israeli troops and government is presented as support for terrorism, if not anti-Semitic acts. This was the case when the head of the Brazilian Executive Branch denounced Israel’s actions in Gaza, comparing them to those of Hitlerism. At that time, the genocide against the Jewish people — in fact, a great trauma — was presented as something unique, singular, and incomparable to any other phenomenon, with no parallel in history. This in a country — on a continent! — where there was the annihilation of thousands and thousands of native peoples and centuries of slavery of Africans and people of African descent.

In drawing attention to the “manipulative interests that may well play a role in the formation of concepts or the utilization of memory,” Dominick LaCapra points to the Middle East, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The historian reflects on how Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted to draw a direct parallel between the threat posed by the Third Reich to Jews in the run-up to the Holocaust and the “contemporary threat” posed by Iran to Israel. Furthermore, in his speech at a 2015 Zionist conference, Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for initiating the genocide during the Holocaust, stating that “Hitler did not want to exterminate the Jews then, he wanted to expel the Jews.”

The Brazilian mainstream press, to the surprise of the unwary, despite criticizing “the leader of the Israeli far right” — as if that were the only problem — has ratified his perspectives and legitimized his actions. This is evident in the headlines of reports that romanticize and trivialize thousands of deaths in Lebanon, in the international political analysts invited to the programs, always with pro-Israel views, and in the demonization of groups and countries that do not align with the United States.

Today, with the bombings intensifying and the carnage increasing with almost 500 dead in a single day, the tenor of the reports is beginning to change a little. But still without any condemnation of Israel — much less of terrorism.

*Osnan Souza has a master's degree in social history from Unicamp.

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