This week, we address the words of the Israel-Hamas war and the terminological difficulties posed by this conflict, sometimes faced with a media fog.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often said to have the greatest symbolic weight in the world. It is also the one where language is undoubtedly the most undermined, because comments flood in and slip-ups are legion, particularly in matters of racism or anti-Semitism. The media also delegate the task of cleaning their comment threads to external service providers. Since the start of the conflict, for example, almost half of these comments have had to be removed from RFI/France 24 social networks. The words are all the more sensitive as the reality is not always well documented. because of ” media suffocation », as RSF says, imposed by the Israelis in Gaza.
And the AFP’s refusal to use the word “terrorist” in relation to Hamas was also widely criticized. Marine Le Pen believes that the AFP was guilty of “ complacency “, by prohibiting the use of the word “ terrorist » towards Hamas, and several elected officials from the right and the majority were also offended. But in this, the AFP is only continuing an instruction that it has always followed since September 11, 2001, including in 2015, during the Bataclan. It consists of verifying and reporting the facts while refraining from any moral judgment, whatever the emotion they arouse, to be considered as factual as possible.
Philip Chetwynd, AFP information director, recalls that the word “terrorist” is used both by the Chinese regarding the Uighurs and by the Russians regarding the Ukrainians. The other agencies, AP and Reuters, do the same, as does the BBC, which also recalls that during the Second World War, it did not speak of the “bad Nazis” but of the “enemy”.
The media regulator also closely monitors the vocabulary used. Arcom will receive the editorial staff on Tuesday to discuss the difficulties of their work, particularly in the face of propaganda. For Israelis who want to mobilize Western countries, Hamas is “ Daesh “, while the Palestinians say they are victims of a ” ethnic cleansing “. Faced with this, what room for the borderline humor of the comedian Guillaume Meurice who described Netanyahu as “ Nazi without foreskin » on France Inter, or for the departure of the lawyer Arno Klarsfeld fearing on LCI that “ Muslims » working on construction sites in France have access to explosives? Seized on these questions, the regulator will undoubtedly call for moderation to avoid importing the conflict into France, at least in words.
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