It’s time to stop calling them terrorists

Everyone except a few self-hating Jews at Harvard and Yale seems pleased that the IDF vaporized Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Rabbi Moshe Hauer of the OU said, “With the assassination of the wicked and murderous Hezbollah terror chief Nasrallah, we must say Halleluka, giving praise to God.” New York Congressman Ritchie Torres remarked, “Hassan Nasrallah was a war criminal who led the world’s most heavily armed terrorist organization, notorious for raining rockets upon innocent civilians.” President Biden wrote, “Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror.”

These remarks are welcome, but to call Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations is to vastly understate their strength and strategic impact. The terrorist label is inaccurate and ineffective in the extremely important information warfare that threatens the state of Israel. It’s a false narrative that Hezbollah and Hamas want, because it furthers their agenda. It’s time to stop calling them terrorists. It’s time to stop fighting their propaganda war for them.

What would you call an entity with 100,000 highly trained troops that controls a strategically vital territory, armed with 100,000 rockets?

What would you call an entity with 100,000 highly trained troops that controls a strategically vital territory, armed with 100,000 rockets, some of which are capable of delivering 1000-pound warheads to Tel Aviv? Jordan has an army of equal size. Germany’s Bundeswehr has 169,000 troops, as does the IDF.

What would you call an entity that has the capacity to bombard a sovereign nation, unprovoked and undeterred, for 11 months straight with 10,000 missiles, causing mass death and destruction? What would you call an entity that has carried out military strikes around the world for 32 years? What would you call a military organization with a highly sophisticated command structure and communication network—an organization with its own foreign relations apparatus and extensive geopolitical alliances?

I would call that an army, not a terror group. The New York Times sort of got it right, in an otherwise appallingly flattering obituary, calling Nasrallah the leader of “a domestic political force and one of the most heavily armed nonstate forces in the world.” Not to be outdone in sucking up to mass murderers, the AP referred to him as “Charismatic and shrewd.”

Hezbollah is a large, organized armed force serving at the direction of what is essentially a sovereign actor on the world stage. Calling them a terror organization plays into Iran’s anti-western narrative. It allows them to play the underdog. It tricks the world media and global leaders into thinking of them as a ragtag band of freedom fighters struggling against the “imperialistic forces” of the west.

Calling them a terror organization plays into Iran’s anti-western narrative. It allows them to play the underdog.

Terrorists are a survivable thorn in the side. An army is an existential threat. People who ought to know better get these two constructs mixed up. As a result, when Israel bombs southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah missile launchers, too many leaders in government and media complain about overkill, saying, in effect, they’re just terrorists. This dynamic is also vividly on display with Hamas, an equivalently organized military/sovereign entity that the world indulges in playing the “we’re just noble freedom fighters” card.

Part of the problem is the west’s habit of only treating UN member states as legitimate nations. The US and other major players look to official “Westphalian” states as the exclusive sovereign powers, ignoring nonstate actors like Hezbollah or relegating them to impotent secondary status. This is a fallacy, with Lebanon offering a great example. Calling on the government of Lebanon to rein in in Hezbollah is like asking me to convince Noth Korea to pull back from the DMZ.

Armies of sovereign states are held to international standards and laws that govern the use of military force. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s something that most reasonable world leaders can agree upon

Armies of sovereign states are held to international standards and laws that govern the use of military force. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s something that most reasonable world leaders can agree upon. If Belgium launched 10,000 rockets at French civilians, the world wouldn’t exhaust itself tap dancing around labelling the attack an act of war. Belgium would face sanctions and worldwide condemnation. France could retaliate and no one would bat an eye. Yet, when Hezbollah and Hamas engage in the identical tactics, they get a free pass. They’re “just terrorists.”

The terror label delegitimizes Israel by allowing Hezbollah and Hamas to flip the script and say that Israel is the “real terrorist.” The label provides cover for their apologists to ignore their cruelty, corruption and depraved indifference to the lives of the people they purport to protect.

The reality is that Israel is fighting a multi-front war for its existence.

The reality is that Israel is fighting a multi-front war for its existence. It is squaring off against multiple armies, the collective strength of which is much greater than that of the IDF. It’s time the world started to see the conflict that way—if for no other reason than that this multi-front war is also a war against the United States and other countries.

Ending the use of this inaccurate term would also be useful in empowering critics of Hezbollah and Hamas in the west. Many leaders, including Biden, think that the word “terrorist” is the ultimate insult, a term that all good people will respond to with disapproval and disgust. Sorry, the word “terrorist” lost its power to shock sometime around 2003, when DHS’s orange and red terror warnings at airports became fodder for late night comics.

Narratives matter. Labels matter. They allow us to frame dialogues that affect public opinion and drive policy decisions. It’s time for the terror label to go in references to Hezbollah and Hamas. They are geopolitical entities with large, well-trained and equipped armies. We need to be clear about this fact if we are to make any gains in an information war that threatens Israel’s existence.