One man’s terrorist

ABC World Today, March 6:

ELEANOR HALL: And yet you’re in no doubt that Hamas, or certain members of Hamas, are terrorists?

ROBERT FISK: Look, I don’t use the word terrorist about anybody. This has become a semantically meaningless word. Look, there are people in the Hamas movement who support the murder of innocent people, yes, of course.

There are”¦ I’m not trying to make equivalences here, but when you have an Israeli air force officer, as we did at one occasion in Gaza, who bombs a block of apartments, knowing that he will kill innocent children, as well as a man who is believed to be behind suicide bombings, what is that man? What goes on in his brain too?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer damns the George Clooney film, “Syriana.” His typically hysterical article – and he wonders why a sea of anti-Americanism is washing across the world? – argues that any work of art that dares to question US policies in the Middle East is a gift to Osama:

Most liberalism is angst- and guilt-ridden, seeing moral equivalence everywhere. “Syriana” is of a different species entirely — a pathological variety that burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.

The film is great, by the way. Challenging, witty, moving and complex. Just the kind of film Krauthammer would rather not be made. In its place, films celebrating patriotic fervour and liberations across the world are far more his style. In fact, perhaps he should move to North Korea; he’d fit right in.

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