Terminology and Simple Truths

When a Palestinian shoots at an Israeli he is called a terrorist or a militant (unless you’re in Palestine where they’re freedom fighters).

When an Israeli shoots at a Palestinian he is called a soldier (with the exception of occasional violence from Israeli settlers).

When Palestinian militants take an Israeli soldier from his on-duty assignment it is a kidnapping.

When Israeli soldiers take a Palestinian militant from his home it is an arrest.

The Palestinian resistance is a chaotic hodgepodge of fighters of disparate political, ideological, and organizational affiliation.

The Israeli army is the military force of a sovereign, internationally recognized government.

In academia they would say, ‘in any country the government holds a monopoly on legitimized violence. As such even abusive military actions tend to evoke the vocabulary of legitimate security measures, and on the other hand semi-equivalent military actions from non-state actors evoke the vocabulary of terrorism.’

It’s just a matter of terminology. But how many truths, in the way we perceive things, in the way we believe things to be, are hidden in a twist of terminology…