Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
You can't change a lexicon because it doesn't fit your view. It's an uneven and even atrocious thing that Israel is doing. I think Israel need to stop killing it's own citizens, but you can't tell everyone who calls this is a war (which it literally is by every definition) that they don't understand it. It's a war, you were just pointing out how one sided it is, and I agree.
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In this instance, I am not the one changing a lexicon to fit my view.
Israel does not view Palestine as an independent nation. They do not regard them as sovereign and informally do not recognize Palestine's right to exist.
Domestically, Israel refers collectively to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan heights as 'The Occupied Territories', giving them a formal designation as the occupier.
Conversely, they also do not recognize Hamas as a legitimate government, and as such, Hamas is not a military but a militia.
Israel controls land, sea and air routes into and out of the occupied territories and claim them as their own territory. Hamas, as an illegitimate militia has no formalized national defense policy, as they are unable (as evidenced currently) to do anything meaningful militarily to advance their position. There is no overarching policy or doctrine which informs the other branches of government on how to behave in 'war time'. In polemology, these are all important factors for legitimizing something as a 'war', otherwise, you could make arguments like the Branch Davidians were at war with the United States at Waco, or the British were at War with the Irish in the 80s, White South Africans were at War with Blacks during the same period, or that Canada was at war with it's native population at Oka, all pretty obvious, inaccurate statements.
I mean, in your opinion, Israel is "killing it's own citizens" in reference to Palestinians. Do countries often wage wars against their internal population, or do we have a different, harsher term for that? Were the Turks 'at war' with their Armenian population? Were the Iraqi's 'at war' with their Kurdish population? Was Germany 'at war' with the French Resistance? Was South Africa at war with Nelson Mandela? Of course not.
Using the terminology of 'war' lends credibility to the use of often terrible violence. What were once cautionary tales of the reality of war are now delivered as half-hearted indifference towards the ugly realities of war, that are used to justify unspeakable violence that would not be tolerated in any theatre other than 'war', because of their barbarism. This has played itself out quite eloquently in this thread. As the violence worsened, the dogmatic responses of 'this is the reality of war' became stronger and stronger, as defenses of the brutal, assymetrical violence. Because, if you didn't have these hemmingway quotes to justify the violence, you might have to
actually think of the results of that violence and whether it has a value.
By calling it a war, you can just abdicate responsibility and judgement by saying "well, bad things happen in war", which A) Completely and utterly undervalues the sacrifices made by whole populations during times of 'actual' war, and B) Legitimizes whole scopes of violence that would be obscene if justified with anything other than the 'war' label. It's an implicit acquiescence to one side of the conflict, regardless of how many appeals to the 'both sides are bad' argument one makes preceding or following.
Viewing this as a war is in and of itself an absolution of violence from one side of this conflict, by legitimizing their actions and motivations.
If I can call launching rockets into Israel terrorism, why can't you call launching bombs into gaza terrorism? Instead, it's terrorism on one side and war on the other.