I’m in the US.
I haven’t discerned a pattern, by the media, in the titling of the horror currently underway.
I’ve seen Al Jazeera use both phrasings. I haven’t determined that other media sites are hardlining their terminology either, but I notice the difference as I browse.
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but these days people seem extra sensitive about names.
USA vs Taliban
Compared to
USA vs Afghanistan
Hamas is elected via a minority of Gaza as a result Hamas doesn’t act with the will of the majority and calling this the Israeli-Gaza war is disingenuous to the people of Gaza.
Hamas were elected in January 2006 and have refused new elections since.
The average person in Gaza was somewhere between “way too young to vote” and “didn’t exist yet” the last time an election was held
And as half the population of Gaza is under 18, they for sure didn’t vote for them.
On top of that, Nethanyahu has greatly supported Hamas and sabotaged moderate political alternatives
Isn’t Gaza losing more people to this so called war than either Hamas or Israel?
This feels like saying there was a fight between two people and not mentioning that the biggest fighter only seemed to really be attacking a third smaller, less-aged person for some odd reason.
To me it’s who’s trying to kill who. Hamas (the group) wants to destroy Israel, Israel in turn wants to destroy Hamas, not Gaza (this part is actually very subjective)
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It’s a good way to frame things. As an outsider, the subjectivity of the IDF’s target is why I wonder if people are choosing one term for the war over another. Some see the intentional bombing of refugee camps, ambulances, and aid convoys as targeting the civilians of Gaza in what amounts to a systematic extermination of Palestinians. The casualty numbers seem to heavily favor that interpretation. So could this be one reason for some news outlets to frame the conflict as Israel vs Gaza itself? Or is the word choice more nuanced than that, given how it seems as though the two names are being used interchangeably on both sides of the line?
Israel is definitely attacking Gaza, but Gaza isn’t an entity with the ability to fight back. Thus ‘Israel–Gaza war’ is a false equivalence.
Similarly, ‘Israel–Hamas war’ is troublesome because both are also attacking people not part of the conflict.
Maybe it’s ‘a series of Israel & Hamas terrorist attacks in the region of Gaza’ 🤷
Whoever thinks Israel purposefully targets civilians ignores how Hamas operates. It has been documented for years by the UN and human rights organizations that they use civilians as shields.
Getting Palestinian civilians dead is part of their strategy.
That’s also entirely unfair to the long standing apartheid state Israel has run against Palestinians. Push anyone long enough and they push back.
Kids throw rocks? Fuckin execute them, according to the IDF.
I’m not defending Israel settlements in the West Bank.
But that’s largely independent from Hamas actions or intentions. Hamas was founded before the first intifada, and it existed at relatively peaceful times when the talks about a two state solution were meant serious on the Israeli side. Their intentions then were not different from today’s.
Hamas never wanted peace, and they never wanted to peacefully coexist.
(*) edit: wait did you say me pointing out how Hamas uses civilians as shields is unfair against the Hamas??
I had a problem with your opener:
whoever thinks Israel purposefully targets civilians…
They have for a while, and currently they are. And it’s well known and historically proven that behavior like that results in backlash eventually. And then nothing good happens.
they currently are
You didn’t read the follow up after my opening that you had problems with.
Or you are ignoring how Hamas operates.
The claim that Hamas reacts to anything that Israel does in the West Bank is a myth.
Yeah the last point being so subjective is why many call it Israel vs Gaza and or Hamas. I find that Israel vs Hamas is more fitting however. This is because many civilian casualties are because Hamas officials use the population as their meat shield. Many of those schools, hospitals and other civilian centers often contained a cowardly official of Hamas. It’s important to acknowledge that this does not make it any less tragic but it does demonstrate Israel’s main objective is destroying Hamas and their leaders rather than Gaza itself. It’s all about intent
I agree that intent is an important consideration. In war, combatants are obligated to be intentional with who they target. That intentionality is even codified into international law. It’s why we say that civilian casualties must be minimized whenever possible. By law, commanders must attempt to discriminate between military and civilian targets, applying force appropriately to target only those who are part of the conflict. By law, retaliation is governed by the principal of minimum force, meaning only so much force as is required to remove the threat, and no more.
When those of us outside the conflict zone are confronted with dead children on the front page, that’s the standard of “intent” we’re weighing our reactions against. For many, it’s hard to see how attacks on refugee camps were intended to spare refugees. How attacks on aid convoys and ambulances intended to spare the sick and wounded. How refusing to allow food, water, and the gasoline that hospitals need in order to operate is intended to safeguard the welfare of civilians who have been forced to drink sea water just to stay alive. Even if Hamas is using the population as human shields, it doesn’t change that the intent should be to spare those civilians in spite of Hamas’ actions. They’re fellow human beings. They deserve that bare minimum of thought. Sure, dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza City would wipe out the terrorists, but I think we’d all agree that’d be a war crime since it would also murder millions. The same logic applies here on the smaller scale (though 10,000 residents - half of them children - isn’t exactly “small scale”). That’s why it’s hard to see intention in those headlines. At least aside from the intention to do exactly what you’d expect bombing a refugee camp to do - murder refugees. The indiscriminate leveling of a region isn’t targeted, but it sure as hell looks intentional.
I desperately want to be wrong here, and like I said, I’m an outside observer from America just like you. But that’s the train of logic that I see dominating calls for a humanitarian pause over here, and it’s rather compelling.
Hamas is holding hostages and Israel’s deciding to kill those hostages.
It’s a nice bit of doublespeak.
Imagine if the UK started carpet-bombing major cities in Northern Ireland, and called it UK vs the IRA, as opposed to UK vs NI.
See, we’re not killing people, we’re killing terrorists. It’s fine, stop complaining, just let us do it.
One might even say its how language works nowadays… Newspeak if you will
It matters very little. It’s performative, trying to justify the conflict by framing it one way or another. The reality on the ground will remain the same no matter what the media calls it. Ultimately, it will be historians that name the war.
The combatants are Israel and Hamas. The location is Gaza. Conclude from that what you will as far the “proper” name for the conflict.
The first is ideologies, the second is location.
Seems to be like a more accurate description would be the Israeli perpetrated Gazan genocide. Calling it a war is like taking a flamethrower to your backyard because you stepped on a nettle and then calling it lawn care
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“Israel-Hamas War” vs “Israel-Gaza War”?
Both are pure propaganda - Israel, and the western countries that backs it, wants to pretend that this is some “new” conflict and not the very same one Israel has been waging non-stop against Palestinians since 1949.
gaza is the location, hamas are the terrorists that govern it
Gaza was given to Arabs for self rule and determination in 2005, all Jews left Gaza, even Jewish graveyards were dug up and moved, it was theirs to do with as they liked.
They’ve spent the last 18 years making into a terrorist Disneyland with a dozen Islamofascist terrorist organizations with the stated goal of killing Jews and destroying the state of Israel, they’ve fired hundreds of thousands of missiles into Israel indiscriminately targeting civilians, and launched countless cross borders attacks against Jewish civilians, including one that caused the largest loss of Jewish life in any single day, anywhere, since the Holocaust on October 7th.
They were given Gaza to live in freedom and self determination, they used it to kill Jews. They were warned. They chose to ignore the warnings.
These acts of terrorism were perpetrated by the entire Gazan community, they voted for Hamas, and allowed Hamas to rule their government for the last 17 years, Hamas and all the other Islamic terrorists in Gaza are not outsiders, they were born in Gaza of Gazans, they were raised in Gaza, they were educated in Gaza, they married and had children of their own in Gaza, their Parents, teachers, mosques, hospitals, are all in Gaza, from which they use to hid and store weapons to attack Jews, Hamas, PIJ and all the other Islamic terrorist in Gaza ARE Gaza, there has been no uprising in Gaza, there have only been attacks on Israel. This is what Gazans have supported and sacrificed for in every way they possibly could.
And now it’s here. I do hope they enjoy what they’ve worked generationaly to achieve.
There will be no ceasefire this time.
