What do Zahir Ismail, Fadi Samaneh, Jamal Taeh, Ahed Faris, Bilal Al Ghoul, Jamal Mansour, Thabet Thabet, Jamal Salameh and Samir Abu Zeid have in common?

They were all Palestinians; they were all dedicated men and committed activists; they were all assassinated by Israel during the ongoing Palestinian uprising.

While the death of a child or an elderly person evokes sympathy, the death of dozens of Palestinian men who are assassinated in a bloody killing campaign often generates little empathy. Israel calls its victims “terrorists” and most Western media converts the term to “militants”. But who cries for the death of a militant? Who worries about the fate of a militant? Who cares to wonder what a militant even is?

In the media’s perception, almost every Palestinian man is a militant. Zahir Ismail, Fadi Samaneh, Jamal Teah, Ahed Faris were “militants” because they rushed to aid wounded men in the village of Beit Iba, after Israeli soldiers ambushed them at dawn on Aug. 22. The mosque of Beit Iba, northwest of the West Bank of Nablus, called on local residents to help their wounded brethren, at the border of the village, who were bleeding. The soldiers had blocked ambulances from reaching the scene.

Four young men risked their lives to help their fellow villagers. Eyewitnesses say that soldiers captured them, and then tortured and shot them dead at close range. Jamal Teah had a hole in his chest; the rest had deep ax and bullet wounds. The young men were killed in cold blood. However, the villagers could take home only three of the bodies. The fourth, that of Ahed Faris, was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers. That is a normal practice the army adopts, in order to torture the families who lost their loved ones. Israel’s army spokesman said, in what was a statement prepared in advance, that the young men were planting a bomb.

News agencies in the West called the young men militants. If you are a Palestinian man between the age of 18 and 50, your death at the hands of Israel, no matter how savage and inhumane it may be, is a victory for the Israeli Army, and a worthless loss in the Western media. You are automatically categorized as a militant, a terrorist, and somehow you have endangered the lives of Israeli soldiers, even if you are killed in the privacy of your own home like Samir Abu Zeid.

On Aug. 22, Abu Zeid was at home in the town of Rafah, accompanied by his six-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl. A missile killed all the three of them instantly. Doctors at a nearby hospital said that the bodies arrived in pieces. Israel said Abu Zeid was a terrorist. The Western media dubbed him a militant.

But when one examines the resumes of all of these individuals, one will find incredibly different faces that neither “terrorist” nor “militant” describes. One finds honest individuals, dedicated fathers, respected lawyers, doctors, journalists and activists; men who represent large segments of the Palestinian society with its wide spectrum of political affiliations.

If every Palestinian who identifies with a political party and embraces such principals as freedom, dignity, resistance, independence and human rights becomes a terrorist from an Israeli point of view, and a militant from a Western one, then every Palestinian man and woman, and even child is a terrorist and a militant.

It’s sad how we question Israeli accounts when they kill a child, but contest little the killings of men who die for the honor of their shattered nation. It’s a tragedy that Israel is left to pass verdict on people who, in a world that judged men and issues on merit, would have been perceived as heroes, not militants.

Being a Palestinian activist means that you are a walking dead man; you are targeted, in a taxi cab, in your office, while sending an e-mail, sipping coffee with your neighbors or playing games with your young children. When you live, you live poor, most likely in a refugee camp, deprived of all freedoms and denied all joys in life. And when you die, it’s a horrible death by a surface-to-surface missile, car bomb, booby-trapped telephone.

Israel’s murder campaign goes on; more names will be added to the list; more men of honor will fall. Others will be born out of the tragedy to lead the way for a new generation of activists.

And no matter what Israel calls them, and regardless of what the Western media reiterates, for Palestinians and for every truthful and honest human being, they shall remain our ever-standing heroes, legends to inspire and examples to live by.