by Jodi Rudoren
JERUSALEM — As militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli Air Force traded a hail of rockets and bombs last week, a Twitter notification popped up on my screen: “We applaud @rudoren for not using the word ‘respond’ when describing Palestinian retaliation to Israeli violence.”
I welcome the rare applause on social media. But in this battle context, is there such a big difference between “respond” and “retaliate”?
Merriam-Webster’s online thesaurus lists them as related words. Its dictionary defines “respond” as “to do something as a reaction to something that has happened or been done.” Indeed: The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad sent scores of rockets into southern Israel after Israeli troops killed three of its members (Israel said the three fired a mortar at its troops; the Palestinians said that was because they were on the Gaza side of the border fence). KEEP READING
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