Comment by rbanffy

Comment by rbanffy 10 months ago

35 replies

We should avoid using the name of the country as a proxy for its current government. The people has nothing to do with this - this is all planned and executed under the auspices of the current prime minister and his associates.

Even though the people largely supports their agenda, an action that targets three people but affects 2,700 people as collateral damage would not pass by their parliament.

anigbrowl 10 months ago

We should avoid using the name of the country as a proxy for its current government

I understand your point but synecdoche is the oil on the gears of discourse. This required a lot of people's involvement, from those issuing the orders to technicians at the bottom of the chain of command. It's not Netanyahu's cabinet that did the work of placing explosive charges in thousands of compact devices and then repackaged and shrinkwrapped them.

Obviously once could refer to the 'Netanyahu regime' or some other more specific term, but then someone else would complain that this was a mendacious mischaracterization of the country's political system or suchlike. To the extent that civilians there don't with to be identified with their political leadership or take on the moral responsibility for its decisions, they'd better step up their efforts to topple the government by means of a general strike or some other time-honored method.

wkat4242 10 months ago

The people voted for this government.

I do think we can hold Israel as a country responsible. But what we can't do is blame Jewish or even Israeli people in general. Though I don't see anyone doing this. The current government is always quick to draw the antisemitism card when being criticised but I never see anyone actually doing that.

  • ethbr1 10 months ago

    Voted for it at one point. Most of Netanyahu's recent actions are because he knows he'd be voted out in an election called today.

CaptainNegative 10 months ago

Why would you assume this targeted three people? I assume the most likely scenario is that the attackers targeted as many Hezbollah members as they could, and were extremely successful at it.

  • rbanffy 10 months ago

    That's a very good point - if the goal was to disable comms and incapacitate as many targets as possible, then collateral damage numbers are much lower.

    It's unknown how many were family members of targeted individuals, and whatever the number actually is, it'll be misreported.

    • tptacek 10 months ago

      Why would the family members of a Hezbollah operative be carrying a pager tuned to Hezbollah's private communications network? A reminder that Hezbollah operates a parallel phone system, and is in many ways more sophisticated and organized than the de jure government of Lebanon, whose military forces Hezbollah outnumbers.

      • seadan83 10 months ago

        The family member would not necessarily need to be carrying the pager, just near it. Picture a child standing next to adult, pager on hip would be next to the kids head. Pagers are not always worn too, could be on top of a table, etc..

        • tptacek 10 months ago

          Right. Yes. That's more than plausible. I have no reason to dispute the accounts of bystander casualties.

thisoneworks 10 months ago

Since when did naming a country for their military action signify the opinion or inclination of the majority of civic population? When newspapers report on "country A did X" it almost always means their government did X. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make

  • rightbyte 10 months ago

    It is some sort of dehumanization. Since it got into fashion, I've noticed some colleges started to refer to companies in China as 'China'. Like as if they are dealing with Xi when procuring washers.

  • rbanffy 10 months ago

    You are lumping together a population that doesn't necessarily agree with the actions. It creates negative attitudes towards citizens of that country (or people who look like citizens of that country).

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